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The microfabrication of mold for polymer microfluidic devices with Zr-based metallic glass

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Abstract

Polymer microfluidic devices are used for many purposes such as microarrays and biochips. The key tool for manufacturing these chips in bulk is an appropriate mold. However, the popular material for making molds is nickel or nickel alloys, which have low stiffness and wear out easily. Zr-based metallic glass is a promising material for micro- or nanomolds because it has good mechanical properties and can be easily formed with high precision. In this paper, Zr-based metallic glass is proposed for use as micromold insert to make poly-(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) microfluidic devices. Our experiments show that they have good feature integrity and replication quality. Microchannels we fabricated using these replicas did not leak and had good flow performance. Zr-based metallic glass can greatly ease the manufacture of plastic microfluidic devices for research and commercial applications.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the International Science & Technology Cooperation Program of China (No.2015DFA30550), the Basic & Cutting-edge Technology Research Project of Henan Province (No.132300410102), the Henan Provincial Natural Science Foundation (No.162300410245), the Major Science and Technology Special Project of Henan Province (No.171100210600), the Foundation for University Young Key Teacher of Henan Province (No.2015GGJS-155) and the Outstanding Young Talent Research Fund of Zhengzhou University (No.1521327003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanics & Engineering Science, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001, China

    Xiang Zhang, Haotong Li, Zhenxing Wang & Qian Li

  2. National Center for International Joint Research of Micro-Nano Molding Technology, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001, China

    Xiang Zhang, Haotong Li, Zhenxing Wang & Qian Li

  3. Key Laboratory for Micro Molding Technology of Henan Province, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001, China

    Xiang Zhang, Haotong Li, Zhenxing Wang & Qian Li

  4. College of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Liaoning University of Technology, Jinzhou, 121001, China

    Xueye Chen

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  1. Xiang Zhang
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  2. Haotong Li
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  3. Zhenxing Wang
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  4. Xueye Chen
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  5. Qian Li
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Correspondence to Xiang Zhang or Qian Li.

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Zhang, X., Li, H., Wang, Z. et al. The microfabrication of mold for polymer microfluidic devices with Zr-based metallic glass. Biomed Microdevices 20, 96 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-018-0342-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-018-0342-0

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