Micro Fluidic Channel Machining on Fused Silica Glass Using Powder Blasting

Abstract

In this study, micro fluid channels are machined on fused silica glass via powder blasting, a mechanical etching process, and the machining characteristics of the channels are experimentally evaluated. In the process, material removal is performed by the collision of micro abrasives injected by highly compressed air on to the target surface. This approach can be characterized as an integration of brittle mode machining based on micro crack propagation. Fused silica glass, a high purity synthetic amorphous silicon dioxide, is selected as a workpiece material. It has a very low thermal expansion coefficient and excellent optical qualities and exceptional transmittance over a wide spectral range, especially in the ultraviolet range. The powder blasting process parameters affecting the machined results are injection pressure, abrasive particle size and density, stand-off distance, number of nozzle scanning, and shape/size of the required patterns. In this study, the influence of the number of nozzle scanning, abrasive particle size, and pattern size on the formation of micro channels is investigated. Machined shapes and surface roughness are measured using a 3-dimensional vision profiler and the results are discussed.

Glassomer—Processing Fused Silica Glass Like a Polymer

“…However, laser processing usually requires substantial post processing if surfaces of optical quality are required. Industrially established subtractive machining techniques for fused silica include drilling, ultrasonic machining, powder blasting, and water jetting . However, these methods produce only simple geometries and coarse surfaces not compatible with optical applications.…”

Micropatterning of Porous Structures from Co/Continuous Polymer Blends

“…Examples are extracellular scaffolds for tissue engineering,1,2 porous substrates for catalytic reaction,3,4 and permeable media for membrane filtration 5,6. In addition to the internal porous structure, some emerging applications, such as cell aligning scaffolds,7–12 microfluidic devices,13–17 micropatterned porous electrodes,18,19 and fuel cell membranes, 20−25 further require these materials to be shaped into specific geometries, including micropatterns.…”

Interpretation and Modeling of Laser-Induced Backside Wet Etching Procedure

“…Naphthalene/methylmethacrylate (concentrations: c=0.85 and 1.71 M; M=mol/dm 3 ) and pyrene/acetone (c=0.4 M) solutions were used as liquid absorbers. In the experiments we used ArF and KrF excimer lasers (λ ArF =193 nm; λ KrF =248 nm; τ FWHM =30 ns).…”

“…have several application possibilities in refractive and diffractive microoptics and in microfluidics. These materials can be microstructured by conventional techniques which are based on masking procedure (multistep methods): hidrofluidic etching [1], powder blasting [2][3] and ion etching technologies (inductively coupled plasma etching -ICP [4] and reactive ion etching -RIE [5]), and laserbased methods. Hidrofluidic etching and powder blasting have limited resolution and the machined surface is not smooth enough for many optical applications.…”