- #1
blueprint21
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- TL;DR
- Made PDMS chips in the lab; process was time-consuming and frustrating. Curious how others handle chip fabrication, if they automate any steps, and whether they pre-make extra chips to avoid experimental delays.
Hello everyone! I am curious to learn how laboratories handle in-house chip manufacturing using soft lithography for microfluidics research.
In the lab where I worked, only the mask for lithography was made by an external company, whereas the mold and chip fabrication were carried out by us.
The process of making PDMS chips required around 30 min–1 h of manual work between prepolymer casting, punching/cutting, and plasma bonding. However, the total time required to make them was around 4 hours due to degassing and curing steps.
Even though the chip manufacturing was quite straightforward, I found it frustrating since it involved going in and out of the lab and waiting between steps. Additionally, since the space on the silicon wafer was limited, we could only make a few copies of chips per each design, which meant that if all of them clogged we had to interrupt the experiment and make new ones.
That was my experience, I'd love to hear how it's done in your lab:
-How do you make the chips, and what steps do you follow starting from the CAD design?
-Have you ever tried or looked for solutions to automate or speed up the manufacturing process (or parts of it)?
-Do you often pre-produce multiple copies of the chips to avoid running out of them during experiments?
In the lab where I worked, only the mask for lithography was made by an external company, whereas the mold and chip fabrication were carried out by us.
The process of making PDMS chips required around 30 min–1 h of manual work between prepolymer casting, punching/cutting, and plasma bonding. However, the total time required to make them was around 4 hours due to degassing and curing steps.
Even though the chip manufacturing was quite straightforward, I found it frustrating since it involved going in and out of the lab and waiting between steps. Additionally, since the space on the silicon wafer was limited, we could only make a few copies of chips per each design, which meant that if all of them clogged we had to interrupt the experiment and make new ones.
That was my experience, I'd love to hear how it's done in your lab:
-How do you make the chips, and what steps do you follow starting from the CAD design?
-Have you ever tried or looked for solutions to automate or speed up the manufacturing process (or parts of it)?
-Do you often pre-produce multiple copies of the chips to avoid running out of them during experiments?