Three-dimensional Inspection and Characterization of Plastic Micro Mixers Fabricated by Different Packaging Techniques

R. Y. Zhang, K. Chen, L. X. Wang, W. J. Zhu

Department of Materials and Energy Engineering, Guongdong University of Technology,Guongzhou 510090, China.
Department of Materials and Energy Engineering, Guongdong University of Technology,Guongzhou 510090, China..
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.

DOI: 10.4236/jmmce.2009.83015                

Abstract

An X-ray microtomography system was used for inspecting and characterizing the packaging of micro mixers of planar configuration. Two types of micro mixers were machined from acrylic plate by means of precision milling, and four different packaging techniques were tested for mixer assembly: adhesive bonding, plasma bonding, screw-bolting, and xurography with doublesided tape. The interiors of the mixers were thoroughly examined by navigating the threedimensional images generated by the micro CT system. It was found that plasma bonding did not work well on acrylics. The boundaries between the acrylic plate and the plastic tape used in tape bonding were almost indistinguishable in the X-ray images because the densities of these two materials are very close. Of the different packaging techniques we tested tape bonding provided good sealing without the drawback of glue or sealing materials smeared into the mixing chamber or flow channels.

Keywords

Characterization of plastic packaging, Micro-CT (Computed Tomography), Micromixer

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	Stojanovic, J. N., 2006 “Structural and microstructural characteristics of B-doped PbTe semiconductor,” Journal of Minerals and Materials Characterization and Engineering 5-2, pp.143-153.
[2]	Shi, S., Hwang, J. Y., 2005 “Miniaturize chemical plant with microwave heating technology.” Journal of Minerals and Materials Characterization and Engineering 4-1, pp. 61-66.
[3]	Neuser, E., Suppes, A., 2007 “NanoCT visualizing internal 3D structures with submicrometer resolution,” DIR 2007 – Internal Symposium on Digital Industrial Radiology and computed Tomography (June 25 – 27, 2007, Lyon, France), 18 pages.
[4]	Brunke, O., Neuber, D., Lehmann, D. K., 2007 “NanoCT: Visualizing of internal 3Dstructures with submicrometer resolution,” Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings 990 Materials, Processes, Integration and Reliability in Advanced Interconnects for Micro- and Nanoelectronics, pp. 325-331.
[5]	Greer, J., Sundberg, S. O., Wittwer, C. T., Gale, B. K., 2007 “Comparison of glass etching to xurography prototyping of microfluidic channels for DNA melting analysis,” J. Micromech Microeng. 17, pp. 2407-2413.
[6]	Qi, S., Liu, X., Ford, S., Barrows, J., Thomas, G., Kelly, K., McCandless, A., Lian, K.,Goettert, J., Soper, S. A., 2002 “Microfluidic devices fabricated in poly(methyl methacrylate) using hot-embossing with integrated sampling capillary and fiber optics for fluorescence detection,” Lab on a Chip 2-2, pp. 88-95.
[7]	Wang, J., Chen, G., Muck, A., Collins, G. E. 2003 “Electrophoretic microchip with dualopposite injection for simultaneous measurements of anions and cations,” Electrophoresis 24(21), pp. 3728-3734.
[8]	Dang, F., Tabata, O., Kurokawa, M., Ewis, A. A., Zhang, L., Yamaoka, Y., Shinohara, S., Shinohara, Y., Ishikawa, M., Baba, Y., 2005 “High-performance genetic analysis on microfabricated capillary array electrophoresis plastic chips fabricated by injection molding,” Anal. Chem. 77-7, pp. 2140-2146.
[9]	Kelly, R. T., Pan, T., Woolley, A. T., 2005 “Phase-changing sacrificial materials for solvent bonding of high-performance polymeric capillary electrophoresis microchips,” Anal. Chem. 77-11, pp. 3536-3541.
[10]	Horn, G., Mackin, T., Lesniak, J., Boyce, B., 2004 “A new approach for detecting defects in bonded MEMS devices,” Experimental Techniques 28-5, pp. 19-22.
[11]	Sasov, A., 2001 “Micro-CT for nondestructive 3D reconstruction of MEMS and sensors,” Proceedings of the SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering 4407, pp. 388-394.
[12]	Lin, C. L., Miller, J. D., 2001 “A new cone-beam X-ray microtomography facility for 3D analysis of multiphase materials,” 2nd World Congress on Industrial Process Tomography (Hanover, Germany, 29th – 31st August, 2001), pp. 98 – 109.