Molding of Deep Polydimethylsiloxane Microstructures for Microfluidics and Biological Applications

作者：Albert Folch, Arturo A. Ayón, Octavio Hurtado, Martin A. Schmidt, Mehmet Toner · 发表于：Journal of Biomechanical Engineering · 年份：1999 · DOI：10.1115/1.2798038 · 被引用次数：174 · 研究领域：Nanofabrication and Lithography Techniques、Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Technologies、3D Printing in Biomedical Research

Here we demonstrate the microfabrication of deep (> 25 microns) polymeric microstructures created by replica-molding polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) from microfabricated Si substrates. The use of PDMS structures in microfluidics and biological applications is discussed. We investigated the feasibility of two methods for the microfabrication of the Si molds: deep plasma etch of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers and photolithographic patterning of a spin-coated photoplastic layer. Although the SOI wafers can be patterned at higher resolution, we found that the inexpensive photoplastic yields similar replication fidelity. The latter is mostly limited by the mechanical stability of the replicated PDMS structures. As an example, we demonstrate the selective delivery of different cell suspensions to specific locations of a tissue culture substrate resulting in micropatterns of attached cells.