Events

Description:

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Announcing the January Dinner Meeting of
THE GOLDEN GATE POLYMER FORUM

Thursday, Jan. 13, 2000
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"Microdevices Fabricated by Polymer Hot Embossing"
M. Goretty Alonso-Amigo
Jenoptik Mikrotechnik GmbH, Hayward

**ABSTRACT BELOW**

Thursday, Jan. 13, 2000

Cost: $30 ($15 for unemployed/retired/students)

Social Hour: 6:00 PM
Dinner: 7:00 PM
Talk: 8:00 PM

at the "Club House Restaurant", Palo Alto

DIRECTIONS:
From 101 in Palo Alto, take Embarcadaro Road East.
Pass through the first traffic light, and turn left at the sign for "Airport and Golf Course". The "Club House Restaurant" will be on the left after turning. Address is 1875 Ebarcadaro Road.
restaurant phone 650-856-0999
(do not call restaurant for reservations)

Dinner: Italian buffet, with both vegetarian
and non-vegetarian items.

RESERVATIONS:
- Make reservations by noon on Friday, Jan. 7.
- Please provide contact information (email or phone).
- You should receive confirmation of your registration;
if not, please try again.
- Register through the web site,
www.ggpf.org (preferred!)
or contact:
Russell Beste
rbeste@chemscope.com
510-265-8912
- We must ask you to be liable for the cost of
your dinner if you register and do not attend;
cancellations may be made up to the registration
deadline.

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ABSTRACT:

Microdevices Fabricated by Polymer Hot Embossing
M. Goretty Alonso-Amigo
Jenoptik Mikrotechnik GmbH, Hayward

Polymer microfabrication methods are becoming increasingly important as low-cost alternatives to the silicon or glass-based MEMS technologies. Polymer hot embossing is a replication method for planar microstructures applicable to a diversity of materials. Equipment with high precision control of pressure and temperature for hot embossing of polymer materials is now available commercially. These systems have made possible the replication of chips containing microchannels for capillary electrophoresis (CE), and for microfluidics devices, microoptical components and microreactors. Stable and reproducible polymer microstructures have been demonstrated in several types of materials with structural and optical properties matching other performance requirements of the intended micro-devices.

The miniaturization of chemical and biochemical instrumentation has made enormous progress over the last years since the pioneering work of Manz[1] and Harrison[2]. Nowadays almost any technology known to work in the macroscopic world in these fields has been successfully miniaturized, with recent developments like on-chip flow-through- PCR[3], microreaction technology[4] and highly parallel electrophoretic separation devices[5]. In the past however, microfluidic devices for all these miniaturized chemical analysis systems (m-TAS) have been fabricated almost exclusively in silicon, glass or quartz. The main reason for this choice of material can be found in the fact that micro-fabrication methods for these materials have been extensively developed for the microelectronics industry over the last four decades.

The alternative use of plastic as the microdevice material addresses cost issues in product commercialization and the biocompatibility of surfaces. Thus an increasing number of devices have been reported recently in the literature, fabricated on a variety of polymer substrates and using different fabrication methods such as laser ablation[6], injection molding[7], silicone rubber casting[8] or embossing[9] for the microfabrication of the microchannels. Hot embossing has demonstrated potential to fabricate devices in polymers like polymethylmetacrylate (PMMA), polycarbonate (PC) and several hydrocarbon based polymers. The technology offers the advantage of relatively low costs of embossing tools and short-cycle replication process ideal for rapid development prototyping. The process involves few variable parameters and results in high structural accuracy suited for a wide range of microfabrication applications.

1 A. Manz, W. Graber, H.N. Widmer, Sensors and Actuators B1 (1990),
244-248.
2 D.J. Harrison, A. Manz, Z. Fan, H. Lüdi, H.N Widmer, Anal. Chem.
64 (1992), 1926-1932.
3 M.U. Kopp, A.J. deMello, A. Manz, Science 280 (1998), 1046-1048.
4 W. Ehrfeld (Ed.), Proceedings of the 1st International conference
on Microreaction Technology, Springer Heidelberg, 1998.
5 P.C. Simpson, D. Roach, A.T. Woolley, T. Thorsen, R. Johnston,
G.F. Sensabaugh, R.A. Mathies, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95 (1998),
2256-2261.
6 M.A. Roberts, J.S. Rossier, P. Bercier, H. Girault, Anal. Chem.
69 (11) (1997), 2035-2042.
7 R.M. McCormick, R.J. Nelson, M.G. Alonso-Amigo, D.J. Benvegnu,
H.H. Hooper, Anal. Chem. 69 (1997), 2626-2630.
8 C.S. Effenhauser, G.J.M. Bruin, A. Paulus, M. Ehrat, Proceedings
m-TAS ?96, Anal. Methods Instrum. Special Issue (1996), 124-125.
9 L. Martynova, L.E. Locasico, M. Gaitan, G.W. Kramer, R.G.
Christensen, W.A. MacCrehan, Anal. Chem. 69 (1997), 4783-4789.