Elimination of Clogging in PMMA Microchannels Using Water Assisted CO2 Laser Micromachining

Abstract

The accuracy and clogging of microchannels are important for assessing the quality of lab on chip (L-O-C) devices. The clogging affects the fluid mixing efficiency and influences the bonding of substrate. In this paper, inexpensive and quick method for microchannel fabrication in polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) while reducing the thermal damage is introduced. Accordingly, the substrate was covered with a thin layer of water during CO2laser ablation. The effect of water cooling on the clogging formation, heat affected zone and the microchannel geometry in terms of depth and width is investigated. Clogging formation mechanism in the intersection of Y-channel is studied to improve its quality for microfluidics applications. During the experimental work, the CO2laser power was varied from 2.4 to 6 W at scanning speed from 5 to 12.5 mm/s. The results showed that covering the PMMA substrate with a thin layer of water prevented clogging formation and reduced the heat affected zone.