Fabrication of combined-scale nano- and microfluidic polymer systems using a multilevel dry etching, electroplating and molding process

Microfabricated single-cell capture and DNA stretching devices have been produced by injection molding. The fabrication scheme employed deep reactive ion etching in a silicon substrate, electroplating in nickel and molding in cyclic olefin polymer. This work proposes technical solutions to fabrication challenges associated with chip sealing and demolding of polymer high-volume replication methods.

UV-assisted thermal bonding was found to ensure a strong seal of the microstructures in the molded part without altering the geometry of the channels. In the DNA stretching device, a low aspect ratio nanoslit (1/200) connecting two larger micro-channels was used to stretch a 168.5 kbp DNA molecule, while in the other device single-HeLa cells were captured against a micro-aperture connecting two larger microfluidic channels.

Different dry etching processes have been investigated for the master origination of the cell-capture device. The combination of a modified Bosch process and an isotropic polysilicon etch was found to ensure the ease of demolding by resulting in slightly positively tapered sidewalls with negligible undercut at the mask interface.