Abstract
Microfluidic system has been widely applied in various fields such as diagnostics, tissue engineering, medical or pharmaceutical industries. Three optically transparent biocompatible/biodegradable polymers, poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS), poly (glycerol sebacate) (PGS), and poly(1,3-diamino-2-hydroxypropane-co-polyol sebacate)s (APS), were used in this study to fabricate microfluidic system using laser ablation technique. Laser ablation is a rather simple method to fabricate microfluidic system. It is an easily controlled, green and safe process compared to conventional microfluidic system fabrication methods. Laser ablation has been carried out with ArF laser system during the investigation. There are five main parameters controlling the settings of the laser-ablation system: fluence (energy per unit area), beam firing frequency, beam velocity, beam size of laser pulse, and repeated ablation. Fluence of 6 J/cm2, frequency at 20 Hz, beam velocity of 200 μm/s, beam size of 150μm, and repeated ablation of 25 times are chosen as the setting for effectively and efficiently the fabrication of microfluidic systems. In addition, details of manufacturing of microfluidic channels using laser patterning are also investigated by directly writing on the polymer film. Several important features of fabricated laser patterns are presented, such as overlap, corner variation, and defocus of laser. Finally, the application and fluid flow characteristics of microfluidic systems on PDMS, APS and PGS are discussed.