Fabrication of Cyclo-olefin polymer-based microfluidic devices using CO2 laser ablation

Cyclo-olefin polymer (COP) have unique physical and chemical properties, such as high glass transition temperature, low density, low water absorption, biocompatible and high UV transmission. This study proposed a low-cost and rapid approach for the fabrication of COP-based microfluidic devices using CO2 laser ablation. During the CO2 laser ablation on the surface of COP, the polymer material will meltdown, decompose and evaporate, resulting in a Gaussian-like cross-section profile in micro scale. This study also provided a detailed study for the depth and width of the laser ablated microchannels with various laser energy and scan speed. For the demonstration of the proposed technique, a droplet generator was fabricated and tested in this study. The proposed fabrication method for COP based microfluidic devices is low-cost, rapid, and has a great application prospects in the biological and medical fields.