Authors:
Toshiyuki Horiuchi
1
;
Hiroyuki Watanabe
2
;
Naoki Hayashi
3
and
Takuya Kitamura
4
Affiliations:
1
Tokyo Denki University, Japan
;
2
Toshiba Mobile Display, Co., Ltd, Japan
;
3
CANON Inc., Japan
;
4
Nagano Electronics Industrial Co., Ltd., Japan
Keyword(s):
Microfluidic mixer, Microfluidic device, Thick resist, Flow path, Aspect ratio.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomechanical Devices
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Biomedical Instruments and Devices
;
Hardware
;
MEMS
;
Sensor Networks
Abstract:
A microfluidic mixer was simply and easily fabricated using 380-μm thick patterns of negative resist SU-8 as flow paths and sealing the paths by an acrylic lid plate. The SU-8 was mainly composed of epoxy resin, and it was hardened by the baking after the development. Because the too narrow flow paths were not practical, the target width of the flow-path was set at 30-100 μm. The aspect ratio limit for 1:1 line-and-space patterns increased when the pattern width became large and the lower numerical-aperture or higher F-number projection lens was adopted. The maximum aspect ratio for line-and-space patterns with a width of 26-53 μm was 6.5-8, corresponding to the pattern width and the numerical aperture. After snail-shape flow-path groove patterns were successfully fabricated, the resist block was covered by an acrylic lid plate and sealed using screws. After microtubes were attached to the entrance and exit holes, red and blue colored waters were injected into the two entrance tubes.
As a result, two waters were mixed while passing through the snail-shape paths, and dark purple water was ejected from the exit. It was successfully verified that the easily and simply fabricated microfluidic mixer actually worked well.
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