Zhang Xinjie, Zhu Zhixian, Ni Zhonghua, Xiang Nan, Yi Hong
School of Mechanical Engineering, and Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Design and Manufacture of Micro-Nano Biomedical Instruments, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China.
Biomed Microdevices. 2017 Jun;19(2):21. doi: 10.1007/s10544-017-0169-0.
This work presents the fabrication of a microfluidic autoregulatory valve which is composed of several layers of thin polymer films (i.e., polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) double-sided tape, and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)). Briefly, pulsed UV laser is employed to cut the microstructures of through grooves or holes in the thermoplastic polymer films, and then the polymer-film valves are precisely assembled through laminating the PDMS membranes to the thermoplastic polymer films through the roll-lamination method. The effective bonding between the PVC film and the PDMS membrane is realized using the planar seal method, and the valve is sandwiched and compressed by a home-made housing to achieve the good seal effect. Then, the flow performances of the prototype valve are examined, and constant flow autoregulation is realized under the static or dynamic test pressures. The long-term response of the valve is also studied and minimum flow-rate decrements are found over a long actuation time. The fabrication method proposed in this work is successful for the low-cost and fast prototyping of the polymer-film valve. We believe our method will also be broadly applicable for fabrication of other low-cost and disposable polymer-film microfluidic devices.
这项工作展示了一种微流控自动调节阀的制造方法，该阀由几层聚合物薄膜（即聚氯乙烯（PVC）、聚对苯二甲酸乙二酯（PET）双面胶带和聚二甲基硅氧烷（PDMS））组成。简要地说，使用脉冲紫外激光在热塑性聚合物薄膜上切割出通孔或微孔的微结构，然后通过辊压层合方法将PDMS膜层压到热塑性聚合物薄膜上，精确组装聚合物薄膜阀。采用平面密封方法实现PVC薄膜与PDMS膜之间的有效粘结，并用自制外壳对阀进行夹压，以达到良好的密封效果。然后，对原型阀的流动性能进行了测试，在静态或动态测试压力下实现了恒定流量自动调节。还研究了该阀的长期响应，发现在长时间驱动下流量下降最小。这项工作中提出的制造方法成功地实现了聚合物薄膜阀的低成本快速原型制作。我们相信我们的方法也将广泛适用于制造其他低成本一次性聚合物薄膜微流控装置。
