Rapid prototyping of cyclic olefin copolymer based microfluidic system with CO₂ laser ablation

Cyclic olefin copolymer (COC) has high chemical resistance with low water absorption and good optical transparency in visual and near UV range, which is a promising material for the polymer-based microfluidic systems. A comprehensive method for the rapid prototyping of COC based microfluidic system using CO₂ laser ablation was proposed in this study. The COC substrate was fabricated by injection molding with a commercial injection molding machine, then CO₂ laser was used for direct laser ablation of microchannels on the surface of COC substrate, to seal the laser ablated microchannels, the thermal compression bonding method for COC-based substrates was also provided in this research. The profile of the microchannels was carefully studied with different laser ablation power and scan speed, microfluidic device fabricated using the proposed method were also presented in this research.