Micro-fabrication of point-of-care devices using cost-effective micro-milling and polymer laminate technique

Polymer laminate technique (PLT) is one of the cost-effective approaches used to fabricate disposable microfluidic devices, due to the advantages of rapid set-up and integrity of dissimilar material. This multilayered process is very short in production time, for the desired channel geometry can be machined 2-dimensionally on individual films. The width of the channel is dependent on the tool size, and the channel height is defined by the film thickness. The individual layers can be thermally, chemically, or pressure bonded. Since the polymer laminate technique requires the use of thin film materials, the depth of cut is of high interests because it can alleviate the dependency on expensive machines and laboratories. In this regard, using a high precision machine is not given much thought; in fact, low precision machine tools will make cost effectiveness even more proficient. The downside of low precision machining is the low positioning accuracy and repeatability along the z axis, which could produce high uncertainty in channel height in the machining of thick substrate materials.;In this study, the I-Carver 40-915, typically used for macro scale applications, was used because it's cheap and spacious and provides simple setup and machining using low energy consumption in basic machine shops. In this study, a microfluidic device of low aspect ratio was fabricated using very few parameters such as the lowest preset feed rate of 800 mm/min and stepdown parameter. A suitable geometry was created, but the cleanliness of channel edge was very dependent on cleaning processes rather than machining parameters. Nevertheless, the characterization of the machine for the microfabrication process was very sufficient.