Fabrication of microfluidic devices in silicon and plastic using plasma etching

The move to miniaturization of biomedical systems offers tremendous potential for the improvement of health care, both in terms of reduced analysis time, and in significantly lowering the volume requirements of patient blood, or other bodily fluid. In order to fabricate microchannels for microfluidics, we have investigated two approaches using high-density plasma etching to achieve channel depths of 20-50 microns. The first was plasma etching of tapered silicon masters for hot embossing of plastics to form a capillary electrophoresis device. The second approach was the direct plasma etching of plastic to form a microfluidics device for DNA analysis. In both cases, we report the development of optimized etch conditions using SAS Institute, Inc. design of experiment software. (C) 2001 American Vacuum Society.