Unsaturated Polyesters as Stamps for Hot Embossing of Micropumps

Abstract

We investigated two processes to fabricate unsaturated polyesters, UP, to serve as a stamp to emboss a microfluidic chip to apply to a peristaltic micropump. The mechanical properties of UP are great to apply to vibration type micro-actuators. However, it’s rarely discussed academically. As a result, we proposed two processes developed and compared macro-and micro-scopically. It was first observed that process I of traditional UP curing process and process II of modified process can both replicate the geometries of microfludic chips well macroscopically. In addition, the former one has macroscopic defaults like cracks, bend, and separation between vessel and UP molds, while the latter one doesn’t. Optical microscope and confocal microscope are also applied to verify the replication effects microscopically. Again, both processes illustrate good replication results with variation of both lengths and areas all less than 10%, while process II has better geometries and lower deviation on different sites. The process I was proven that the averages of depth and widest width change rates for replication are-1.06% (between-4.15% and 2.89%) and-2.77% (between-6.93% and 0.67%), respectively. And, the replication results of process II shows also reasonable change and even smaller deviations that the averages of depth and widest width change rates are-4.77% (between-6.33% and-3.84%) and 1.53% (between 1.15% and 2.15%), respectively.