Fabrication of PDMS chips by laser engraving for protein enrichments

PDMS (Polydimethylsiloxane) chips are increasingly important for the application of fluorescence measurements due to their auto-fluorescence free, excellent transparency, and biocompatibility. However, the design of PDMS microfluidic chips requires to fabricate plenty of molds for structure optimization, resulting in high cost. In the present, PDMS chips with nafion membrane were fabricated by simple and low-cost method for bull serum albumin (BSA) enrichment. To optimize the laser cutting and bonding parameters, simulation models were established using Bilinear Kinematic and Mooney-Rivlin models, respectively. The influence of laser power and cutting speed on the width and depth of the micro-channels was investigated. And the effect of bonding pressure on the deformation of PDMS micro-channel and stress distribution near the micro-channels was also analyzed. The leakage test and BSA enrichment demonstrated the practicability and feasibility of the present fabrication method in this work.