Thermoplastic bonding of microfluidic substrates

The assembly of microfluidic components for lab on a chip (LOC) applications that are manufactured from commodity thermoplastics is challenging. A survey of plastic welding techniques validates that contour transmission laser welding is the most viable and commercially demonstrated option for flexibility and sensitive microfluidic tolerances. However, understanding laser energy transmission and absorption phenomenon further complicates analyzing microfluidic thermoplastic welding, since the instantaneous material properties vary with both temperature and pressure. Thermoplastic welding has steep thermal gradients due to high thermal resistances, resulting in asymmetric heat affected zones (HAZ). Welding fixture sensitivities may be engineered to tune the weld energy required and a desired HAZ bias to reduce microfluidic channel deformation. Energy imparted by resistively heating thin implants can be easily measured and observed. Resistive heating of implants was demonstrated as a low energy, parallel, and feasible microfluidic welding assembly process. Lessons from implant heating can be applied to more complicated but analogous processes.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Judge, Benjamin Michael

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Brian W. Anthony.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78165

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/78165