Our abundant engineering experience gives Creative Biolabs the confidence to apply the appropriate bonding procedure for clients all over the world and provide the most stable and flexible microfluidic chip sealing service.
Bonding and Sealing
After the etching is complete, the surface structure must be sealed with a waterproof cover to form complete microfluidic channels. In order to ensure the water-tightness and airtightness of the microfluidic system, all the surfaces that come into contact must be tightly and evenly connected, which is very important for the chemical and biological applications of the chip. A chip with poor sealing will not be able to withstand the internal pressure generated by the fluid flow in the micron-level channel, and may even crack or leak during use.
Excellent bonding can produce excellent monolithic chips with mechanical strength similar to the bulk parent material without compromising the microstructure. With years of micro-fabrication experience, Creative Biolabs comprehensively select the appropriate bonding procedure for our clients, and provide permanent/semi-permanent sealing services for microfluidic chips with no reagent pollution, no additional fluid power flux, and high surface cleanliness.
Anodic Bonding
Anodic bonding is suitable for sealing between glass and silicon wafers, metals, and semiconductor materials. The high temperature and strong local electric field cause the atoms at the interface of the two substrates to interpenetrate and create a permanent connection. Both materials for anodic bonding need to have similar coefficients of thermal expansion. Two materials adhered in this way tend to create a perfectly waterproof, leak-free interface that is also able to withstand very high pressures in experiments.
Welding and Thermal Bonding
Welding and thermal bonding have similar protocols. Welding is to cause atomic recombination and diffusion at the silicon or glass interface by thermal disturbances and forms strong interfacial interaction forces. Thermal bonding is to tightly bond flat-surfaced polymer plates under the combined action of heat and pressure and produce a small amount of interpenetration. After a certain period of lattice adjustment and reconstruction, a stable and tight bond is formed.
Our optimized process parameters of temperature, pressure, and bonding time ensure effective bonding area and strength. No contaminants are added or generated during thermal bonding, and thermodynamic properties are close to equivalent solid blocks.
Laser/Ultrasonic Welding
Laser/ultrasonic welding defines and localizes thermal fusion reactions through energy-directed structures, and the concentration of energy results in extremely short bonding times compared to traditional thermal bonding methods.
Surface Modification Bonding
Surface modification bonding is a bonding technique for improving surface properties and bonding chips by plasma or radiation. It is mainly used for the connection between PDMS and PMDS, glass, silicon and other materials. After oxygen plasma treatment, the -CH groups on the surface of PDMS are replaced by -OH, which can form stable covalent bonds with other materials under certain pressure.
Adhesive Bonding
By applying a curable liquid adhesive or a tacky lamination film to the parts in direct contact with the materials, sealing of the channels of the microfluidic chip was thus achieved. The adhesive bonding is simple, highly flexible, rapidly operated, and suitable for chip bonding of almost any material. Using a dissolvable adhesive layer is also the most economical way to reversibly bond chips with cover plates. The pre-packaged adhesive layer also allows us to provide clients with open-channel chips for easy custom surface modification.
Our Services
Abundant experience in micromachining and microfluidic chip production granted Creative Biolabs the ability to provide our clients with the most stable microfluidic chip bonding and sealing services. We are capable of assisting you to realize the stable connection, sealing and bonding of the chip and the substrate material without affecting the channel structure and the physical and chemical properties of the material. Our low-cost efficient bonding service is your irreplaceable choice for microfluidic chip development, please do not hesitate to contact us for more information or to discuss any needs.
For Research Use Only. Not For Clinical Use.
