Efficient Bond of PDMS and Printed Circuit Board with An Application on Continuous-flow Polymerase Chain Reaction

A simple and efficient bond technique for integrating polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and printed circuit board (PCB) is presented in this paper by using half-cured PDMS technique. We take advantage of the mature PCB technology for fabrication of microchannel mold and heating electrodes leading to a cost-effective and mass manufacturing method. PDMS is applied for fabricating microfluidic chip by replica molding while a seamless and reliable bond is formed between cured PDMS chip and half-cured PDMS film on PCB substrate. To demonstrate the reliability of the system, the bond strengths of the PDMS film to PCB substrate as well as the PDMS chip to PDMS film are investigated. An application of a continuous-flow PCR (CF-PCR) chip is also fabricated based on the bond technique. Successful DNA amplification is obtained and compared to the conventional PCR reaction. The proposed bond method is a promising attempt for the integration between polymer and PCB which can be critical for the microfluidic applications requiring low cost, high efficiency and portability.