A novel method to fabricate parylene-based flexible microfluidic platforms with commercial adhesive tape

We developed a new method to fabricate parylene-based flexible microfluidic platforms using commercial adhesive tape. Most of the previous methods required the preparation of parylene channels via a parylene–to–parylene bonding, which could only be achieved at high pressure and temperature. Instead, our method exploits the adherent property of commercial tape as a substrate for the parylene peel-off process. Once the parylene thin film is deposited by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) on top of the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) replica, prepared by conventional lithography process, an adhesive tape peels off the deposited parylene layer with the micro-scale structures from the PDMS replica. We found that the minimum size of the circle posts successfully fabricated by this process is about 10 μm in diameter and 10 μm in height; the maximum value in aspect ratio is about 2.5. In our experimental investigation, pressure in the parylene channels with different wall thicknesses, was measured to estimate the hydraulic resistance of the channel. Our results are comparable with calculated data, with a normalized deviation smaller than 5%. In addition, the hydraulic resistance of the channels on the curved surface obtained with a similar approach showed an increase when the radius of curvature was reduced. Finally, this contribution shows that our method enables a simple and relatively inexpensive fabrication of flexible microfluidic platforms. (technical note)