Alignment System and Application for a Micro/Nanofluidic Chip.

In this paper, a direct pre-bonding technology after alignment of the chip is presented to avoid the post-misalignment problem caused by the transferring process from an alignment platform to a heating oven. An alignment system with a high integration level including a microscope device, a vacuum device, and an alignment device is investigated. To align the chip, a method of 'fixing a chip with microchannels and moving a chip with nanochannels' is adopted based on the alignment system. With the alignment system and the assembly method, the micro/nanofluidic chip was manufactured with little time and low cost. Furthermore, to verify the performance of the chip and then confirm the practicability of the device, an ion enrichment experiment is carried out. The results demonstrate that the concentration of fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) reaches an enrichment value of around 5 μM and the highest enrichment factor is about 500-fold. Compared with other devices, an alignment system presented in this paper has the advantages of direct pre-bonding and high integration level.