New technological surface microfabrication methods used to obtain microchannels based systems onto various substrates

Abstract

The use of microfluidic devices in biomedical research creates clinically useful technologies and devices (for biochemical reaction chambers, and physical particle separation), or in IC chip cooling applications has significant advantages. In the first case, because the fluid volumes within these microchannels are very small, usually several nanoliters, the amount of reagents and analytes used is quite small. In the second case, they present a negligible thermal resistance, due to direct contact with the chip dissipation surface. This paper presents some new technological methods used to prepare by surface microfabrication microchannels and other microfluidic elements, like chambers onto different substrates.