A low-cost method of fabricating hybrid micro-nano fluidic chip by double-layer PDMS mold and UV–thermal nanoimprinting

Abstract

Micro-nano fluidic chips have become important tools in biomedical testing and research, their more frequent and diverse application being hampered mainly by their high cost, reflective of complex and expensive production methods. Our study introduces a simple, cost-effective new procedure whereby a sturdy PDMS mold consisting of two layers of poured PDMS with a photomask film bonded between them is used for replicating a hybrid micro-nano structure on a SU-8 substrate. The bottom surface of the mold receives a pattern of nano-ridges by pouring the first layer of PDMS on a 2D silicon nano-mold obtained by plasma etching after inclined Cu deposition. Using the double-layer PDMS mold, nano-channels can be imprinted with micro-channels cross-linked through the photomask in a single step of UV–thermal imprinting. The advantages of our end product, a chip with 205-μm-wide and 10-μm-deep micro-channels, cross-linked with 158-nm-wide and 90-nm-deep nano-channels, are its high precision and low cost.