A method for UV-bonding in the fabrication of glass electrophoretic microchips

This paper presents an approach for the development of methodologies amenab le to simple and inexpensive microchip fabrication, potentially applicable to dissimilar materials bonding and chip integration. The method involves a UV-curable glue that can be. used for glass microchip fabrication bonding at room temperature. This involves nothing more than fabrication of glue "g uide channels" into the microchip architecture that upon exposure to the ap propriate UV light source, bonds the etched plate and cover plate together. The microchip performance was verified by capillary zone electrophoresis ( CZE) of small fluorescent molecules with no Microchannel surface modificati on carried out, as well as with a DNA fragment separation following surface modification. The performance of these UV-bonded etectrophoretic microchip s indicates that this method may provide an alternative to high temperature bonding.