Ultrafast laser manufacturing of glass microfluidic devices

Microfluidic devices can be manufactured from a variety of materials, such as glass, plastic, photoresist, or silicon. In many cases, glass is preferred to the other materials, in particular when a microfluidic device must sustain high pressures, be fully transparent, and remain chemically inert to injected fluids. Unfortunately, conventional manufacturing of glass microfluidic devices is a complex, time-consuming, multi-step process that involves the combination of photolithography, etching and bonding. In this paper, we present a different approach for the fabrication of glass microfluidic devices. Here, a picosecond laser is the only tool used to manufacture the entire microfluidic device. It is used for: (i) drilling the inlet/outlet ports, (ii) generating a microfluidic pattern directly on the glass surface, and (iii) enclosing a microfluidic pattern by welding the glass cover. The whole manufacturing process can be completed within 2 hours, making this method suitable for rapid prototyping of fully-functional microfluidic devices.