State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, No.2 Si Pai Lou, Nanjing, 210096, China.
Lab Chip. 2016 Mar 21;16(6):984-91. doi: 10.1039/c6lc00152a. Epub 2016 Feb 19.
Compared with microfluidic devices, the fabrication of structure-controllable and designable nanochannel devices has been considered to have high costs and complex procedures, which require expensive equipment and high-quality raw materials. Exploring fast, simple and inexpensive approaches in nanochannel fabrication will be greatly helpful to speed up laboratory studies of nanofluidics. Here we developed a simple and inexpensive approach to fabricate a nanochannel device with a glass/epoxy resin/glass structure. The grooves were engraved using a UV laser on an aluminum sacrificial layer on the substrate glass, and epoxy resin was coated on the substrate and stuffed fully into the grooves. Another glass plate with holes for fluidic inlets and outlets was bonded on the top of the resin layer. The nanochannels were formed by etching thin sacrificial layers electrochemically. Meanwhile, the microstructures of the fluidic outlets and inlets could be fabricated simultaneously to the nanochannel formation. The total processing time for the simple nanochannel device took less than 10 hours. Optically transparent nanochannels with a depth of up to 20 nm were achieved. Nanofluidic behaviors in the nanochannels were observed under both optical and fluorescence microscopes.
与微流控设备相比，结构可控和可设计的纳米通道设备的制造被认为成本高、步骤复杂，需要昂贵的设备和高质量的原材料。探索快速、简单和经济的纳米通道制造方法将极大地有助于加速纳米流体学的实验室研究。在这里，我们开发了一种简单且经济的方法来制造具有玻璃/环氧树脂/玻璃结构的纳米通道设备。通过在基底玻璃上的铝牺牲层上使用紫外激光刻蚀凹槽，并在基底上涂覆环氧树脂并完全填充到凹槽中。另一个带有用于流体入口和出口的孔的玻璃片被粘在树脂层的顶部。通过电化学刻蚀薄的牺牲层来形成纳米通道。同时，可以同时制造微结构的流体出口和入口到纳米通道的形成。简单的纳米通道设备的总加工时间不到 10 小时。实现了深度达 20nm 的光学透明纳米通道。在光学和荧光显微镜下观察了纳米通道中的纳米流体行为。
