The physics, manipulation, and study of extremely small amounts of fluids— microfluidics—is an essential science to the development of lab-on-a-chip and other portable assay technologies, enabling the miniaturization of one or several laboratory functions onto a single integrated circuit that can effectively analyze biological materials such as blood or tissue samples in the field.
Functional, efficient microfluidic devices require precise manufacturing with razor-thin tolerances to fulfill their essential roles in medical diagnostics, clinical point-of-care testing, environmental and agricultural monitoring and testing, veterinary testing, drug discovery, and life sciences daily.
Highly precise polymer injection molding and effective bonding techniques are critical to controlling the flow of fluids through your lab-on-a-chip devices to ensure accurate results and reliable performance in the field.
In particular, cover layer bonding and sealing techniques are of paramount importance. In this free eBook resource, Vantiva Precision BioDevices will walk you through the critical importance of effective cover layer bonding and review common cover layer bonding and sealing techniques. This resource will also demonstrate how the right cover layer bonding and sealing techniques can make all the difference when working to overcome the challenges of manufacturing diverse microfluidic devices.
What Does Cover Layer Bonding and Sealing Do?
From home pregnancy tests and home COVID tests to point-of-care diagnostic devices in countries with limited healthcare resources or less-developed healthcare infrastructure to environmental and agricultural assays and beyond, microfluidic devices play a global role in life sciences.
The bonding technique that holds your microfluidic chip together, particularly what bonds the cover layer to the rest of your chip, is the unsung hero of the lab-on-a-chip device. The cover layer is the “lid” on your microfluidic device that enables your microfluidic device to continue to provide accurate, reliable service and performance.
When properly bonded to the chip, the cover layer on your microfluidic device provides three essential benefits:
Maintains fluidic integrity, preventing leaks and delivering precise control of fluid flow through the device
Microfluidic devices require extremely precise control over the flow of fluid to deliver accurate and reliable testing and assay results. A well-sealed cover layer maintains pressure and prevents leakage, ensuring that the small amounts of pressurized process fluid that flow through the lab-ona-chip device flow where they should, not where they shouldn’t.
- Prevents contamination of the microfluidic chip by foreign materials, ensuring that testing and assay results in sensitive applications are accurate and reliable
Cover layer bonding and sealing not only keeps fluid in but also keeps contaminants out—an absolute necessity for lab-on-a-chip devices for use in sensitive applications such as medical diagnostics or biological assays where inaccurate results can have severe consequences downstream. This is why it’s especially important that microfluidic chip assembly and cover layer bonding all occur in well-maintained cleanroom environments.
- Maintains the structural integrity of your microfluidic device, enabling it to withstand the rigors and stress of its operational environment without breaking
In addition to keeping fluid in and contaminants out, a proper cover layer bond also strengthens the structural integrity of the device overall, reducing the risk of breaking or deforming over repeated use.
Exploring the Microfluidic
Device Bonding Technique Toolbox
To reap the benefits of your microfluidic chip’s cover layer, choosing the right bonding technique is paramount. There are multiple types of microfluidic lab-on-a-chip device bonding techniques that can be applied to ensure a strong seal around your microfluidic chip.
Some are better for certain applications than others; misusing a bonding technique that does not suit the intended applications of your device can hamper its performance and prevent it from delivering accurate or reliable results!
Two main categories of thermoplastic polymer bonding techniques are utilized in microfluidics manufacturing: adhesive bonding and fusion (adhesive-free) bonding. Within these two categories are various bonding techniques, including lamination, resin bonding, thermal bonding, laser welding, solvent bonding, and ultrasonic bonding.
Each technique in the bonding toolbox has its own advantages and disadvantages and its own use cases, some of which we’ll visit later on in our case study section.
Please reach out to me here:
samantha.mcgrogan@vantiva.com for a copy of the full article.