Thermal, adhesive and solvent bonding techniques for polymer and polymer-glass microchip device fabrication

The creation of analytical systems based on microchip foundation for biological, biochemical, genetic analysis is one of the modern analytical instrumentation development tendencies. Sealing is a process of the irreversible bonding formation. Usually it is a finish microchip fabrication stage. The article presents the sealing technologies, which are developing for polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) microchip device, designed for polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Characteristic features techniques of thermal, adhesive (by the photo-polymerization optical compositions) and solvent bonding are discussed. It is shown, that solvent bonding may be applied for hybrid (PMMA-glass) microchip device irreversible sealing. Estimation criterion of the microchip device impermeability is proposed when testing by gravimetric method.