Photolithography-free fabrication of photoresist-mold for rapid prototyping of microfluidic PDMS devices

• Published in: Chinese chemical letters 2022-02, Vol.33 (2), p.987-989
• Main Authors: Qin, Shanshan, Ou, Gaozhi, Wang, Biao, Li, Zheyu, Hu, Rui, Li, Ying, Yang, Yunhuang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Laser cutting; Microfluidics; PDMS; Photolithography-free; Rapid prototyping; Soft lithography
• ISSN: 1001-8417; 1878-5964
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cclet.2021.07.045

Traditional soft lithography based PDMS device fabrication requires complex procedures carried out in a clean room. Herein, we report a photolithography-free method that rapidly produces PDMS devices in 30 min. By using a laser cutter to ablate a tape, a male photoresist mold can be obtained within 5 min by a simple heating-step, which offers significant superiority over currently used photolithography-based method. Since it requires minimal energy to cut the tape, our fabrication strategy shows good resolution (∼ 100 µm) and high throughput. Furthermore, the micro-mold height can be easily controlled by changing the tape types and layers. As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrated that the fabricated PDMS devices are compatible with biochemical reactions such as quenching reaction of KI to fluorescein and cell culture/staining. Collectively, our strategy shows advantages of low input, simple operation procedure and short fabrication time, therefore we believe this photolithography-free method could serve as a promising way for rapid prototyping of PDMS devices and be widely used in general biochemical laboratories. A photolithography-free method was proposed to fabricate photoresist-based mold for rapid prototyping of microfluidic PDMS devices within 30 min. [Display omitted]