Development of adhesive bonding and functional testing systems for in-process inspection of hot embossed microfluidic devices

Microfluidics has emerged as an increasingly popular field with a wide-variety of applications such as medical diagnostics, drug development, and DNA analysis. The transition of microfluidic devices from research to industry has stimulated interest in producing them at low costs and high volumes. Hot embossing has been of interest lately as a low-cost, high quality, and flexible manufacturing method that is ideal for medium-volume production. This project focuses on the continued development of a tabletop microfactory that can be used to study the control of a novel hot embossing machine. By incorporating an in-line measurement system, it would be possible to add feedback control to improve the process. This led to the design of an automated testing machine that uses an optical inspection of the microfluidic channel widths to determine embossing quality and a flow test to verify device functionality.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Reyda, Caitlin J. (Caitlin Jilaine)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David E. Hardt.

• 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/1721.1/87792

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/87792