Ultrafast Laser Processing for Lab-on-a-Chip Device Manufacture
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Ultrafast Laser Processing for Lab-on-a-Chip Device Manufacture Koji Sugioka*, Ya Cheng, and Katsumi Midorikawa RIKEN – The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan *E-Mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT 3D microstructuring of photosensitive glass is demonstrated by femtosecond (fs) laser for lab-on-a-chip manufacture. True 3D hollow microstructures embedded in the glass are fabricated by the fs laser direct write followed by heat treatment and successive wet etching. A variety of microcomponents for a lab-on-a-chip device like a microfluidics, a microvalve, a microoptics, a microlaser, etc. are fabricated by using this technique. The fs laser direct write process is also applied for selective metallization of internal walls of the hollow microstructures embedded in the glass for electric control of movement of the micromechanical components in the lab-on-a-chip device.
INTRODUCTION There has been rapid progress in research and development of lab-on-a-chip devices like micro total analysis systems (µ-TAS) that are used for field-deployable chemical analysis with high-efficiency, high-accuracy, and high-performance.1 The µ-TAS is composed of microfluidic components, such as microcell, and microchannel for infusion of reagents and storage of reactants, micromechanical components, such as microvalve, micromixer, and micropump for control of reagent flow and reaction, and microoptical components, such as micromirror, microlens, micrograting, waveguide, microlaser and microoptical sensor, for in-situ analysis of the reactants. These components are integrated in a small chip with the size of several mm2 ~ several cm2, and then infusion, mixture, and reaction of the reagents and analysis of the reactants are successively conducted. Consequently, µ-TAS makes it possible to reduce reaction and analysis time in human gene and protein analysis, medical inspection, new drug development, and environmental monitoring by measuring a trace amount of reagents. Furthermore, µ-TAS permits us to realize cost-effective analysis scheme as well as on-site measurement in the field. Currently, fabrication of µ-TAS is tried on silicon and glass materials by conventional semiconductor processing based on photolithography. Although these techniques have been well established and are suitable for surface microfabrication, multilayer and multistep processes including stacking and bonding substrates are required to form true three-dimensional (3-D) microstructures. Since it is well known that ultrashort-pulse laser realizes internal modification of the transparent materials2,3, use of such a laser becomes a promising and simple approach for embedding 3-D microstructures inside the materials. Furthermore, direct writing using this laser has several advantages for microfabrication. Namely, it has great flexibility due to the fact that it is resistless and maskless, which is suitable for rapid prototyping. Marcinkevicius et al. have fabricated hollow microchannels inside fused silica by femtosecond
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