Authors: Jafar Alvankarian Burhanuddin Yeop Majlis
Publish Date: 2016/03/08
Volume: 23, Issue: 6, Pages: 1805-1812
Abstract
In this work effect of oxygen diffusion on curing of materials which are sensitive to ultra violet light UV in fabrication of microchannels using micromolds with oxygen permeability is investigated The effects of physical boundary conditions of mold on microfabrication of polymeric arrays of high aspectratio microchannels in presence of oxygen inhibition and under variable UV intensity and dose are studied analytically and experimentally Polydimethylsiloxane PDMS as the oxygenpermeable material and polyurethane methacrylate PUMA as the UVcurable substrate are selected for experiments It is shown that for a wide range of exposure intensity and dose a thin layer of PUMA resin with thickness of a few micrometers in contact with the mold remains uncured and inhibited by high concentration of oxygen molecules while the overall curing rate is reduced by about tenfold for PDMS compared to impermeable silicon mold The direct impact of presence of high concentration of oxygen in both of mold and resin during UV curing and due to insufficient exposure dose and intensity is a considerable alteration in geometries of manufactured microstructures The obtained results are crucial for method of use of micromolding and evaluation of fidelity of the replicated microstructures with the proposed design in terms of verticality of the walls and details of the transferring patterns that are important to microfluidic applications
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