This paper presents modeling and experimental investigations on the effects of process parameters and the viability of directly fabricating microchannels in polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymers which are suitable for the fabrication of microfluidic devices due to their bio-compatibility and transparent properties. Experimental work was conducted using a solid state Nd:YAG laser with 355 nm ultraviolet (UV) wavelength and 5 ns pulse duration at various energy densities and pulse overlapping. The study was focused on understanding the effects of two main process parameters: fluence and pulse overlapping. This study closely investigates the effect of varying process parameters on the ablation depth and profile achieved and the resultant microchannel dimensional quality. It presents findings indicating that both process parameters have strong effects on the profile shape and variability of the microchannel width and depth. For PMMA polymer, the lowest dimensional variability for the microchannel profile is obtained with low fluence values and highest pulse overlapping factor, whereas for PDMS polymer, it was observed that microchannel width and depth decreased linearly with increasing fluence and increased Downloaded by [Gazi University] at 09:55 03 February 20152 non-linearly with increasing scanning rate. Further, process modeling is utilized for predicting microchannel profile and ablation depth and these predictions were validated with experimental results obtained with pulsed laser micromachining at UV wavelength.
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