Fabrication of Three-Dimensional Microvalves of Internal Nested Structures Inside Fused Silica.

Nested structures inside the hard material play a pivotal role in the microfluidics systems, such as the microvalve and the micropump. In this article, we demonstrate a novel and facile method of fabricating nested structures inside the fused silica with a two-step process femtosecond laser wet etching (FLWE) process. Inside fused silica, a spherical structure was made with a diameter of nearly 80 µm in a square chamber. In addition, we designed a simple microvalve with this sphere controlling the current's flow. The novel microvalve structure can be easily integrated into the functional microfluidics systems and will be widely applied in the Lab-on-chip (LOC) system.