You can do a very similar process with UV resin used in 3d printers. Resolution is not as good, but the process is much easier. Spin coat wafer with resin and cure under UV to make bonding layer. Then spin coat again and put mask over and expose to UV for ~30 seconds. Rinse with ethanol to remove excess then do additional UV cure for ~30 min. Then you are done! Takes about 1 hour total time. The resolution you get with UV curable resin is not as good as photoresist, but we can get 100 um resolution about.

yeh

I Agree. I am a noob but I think the shrinky dink method (KISS) is far easier to develop with in both time and complexity, is resistant to loses of resolution to channel widths, and, is less fraught with turmoil and danger from toxic chemicals. Superior in many other ways too! (I mean, just watch this video in full for the 101 step madness). Nonetheless, this is a very good video describing a complex set of methods to a simple problem. Kind of reminds me of the old etching days of tinkering with pcb's... Now, design in cad, send to china, jump in glee as your product returns from the tech capital of the world in a lovely cardboard box bubble wrapped and certified to the nearest thou of a micron; can totally see this moving there if it has not done so already. Very interesting field.

With shrinky dink, you're freehand drawing structures onto the chip. With PDMS (method in the video), you're designing the structures in autocad. Autocad will give much more precision, and is more easily shareable, than freehand drawing. Secondly, changing features, such as 5um channels to 6um channels is much easier to do when you're talking about autocad. In terms of costs, PDMS chips cost about ~$1 per chip.

@@_c_e_ hey if you're still into this you should check out the ESCARGO method, as it enables you to make channels in PDMS without all the procedure shown in this video. It uses 3D printed ABS.

A similar kind is the butterfly needle, which is made to be fed by tube. That would require you blunting the tip though.

Check this out. Worlds Smallest Tesla Valve? - Shrinky Dink (Shrink Film) Microfluidics kzfaq.info/get/bejne/m7RymsJirLbZeGQ.html

@@P-B-G_YT Thought Emporium is an absolutely amazing channel. I'm hoping he'll try and make masters with the Shrinky-Dinks, and then produce silicone versions. He has a love for plasma, so I imagine he'll show how to do oxygen plasma bonding later on. :)

Posting for others in case someone else has this question: You can use a bunsen burner flame to plasma clean the PDMS and then bond it to the slide. It is more difficult to do and you may get small amounts of carbon residue in your microfluidic, but it can be done by holding the PDMS close to the flame, but not so close it burns.

mylar tympan with ink

Micro fluids mainly medical precision dosages

3d printers are relatively low res

@@kieramcadams4103 The 3D anycubic Photon has a 25-100 micron resolution, and it's a fairly cheap one, I found a paper to develop a device to perform RPA and they used a Viper to make their molds

Mara Valverde may i know which paper?

@@maravalverde5814 25-100 micron resolution is still too big for making microfluidic chip.