Materials breakthrough enables wafer scale processing of lab on chip

Created by Californian firm JSR, the photo patternable adhesive (PA) material allows direct thermal bonding with the cover glass. Unlike other common materials, such as PDMS, it also allows for wafer-scale processing, which is a prerequisite for industrial mass production. "PA solves a number of issues that we have with other materials," commented Liesbet Lagae, imec's R&D manager of life science technologies. "It has all the characteristics we are looking for in a photopatternable material to create microfluidic channels on silicon wafers, including a good channel definition and biocompatibility." imec's microfluidic cell sorters merge microheaters and sensors with wafer scale polymer microfluidics. Integrating on-chip imaging, in-flow cell tomography to identify cells and bubble jet flow technology to guide and sort individual cells, the prototype lab on chip devices can process up to 2,000 cells per second. They are expected to find use as ultra fast cell sorters for the detection of circulating tumour cells in human blood.