Femtosecond laser and microfluidic chip processing

Introduction of microfluidic chip:

Generally, the fluid flowing in the micrometer-scale space is called microfluid, and the microfluid whose main feature is laminar flow is called microfluidic. Microfluidic chips are technologies that precisely control fluids at the micron, hundred micron, or even millimeter scale. It has the ability to integrate some basic functional units in the fields of biology, chemistry, medicine, optics, physics, mechanics and so on into a small chip.

Applications of microfluidic chip technology:

Cell analysis

Clinical tests

Chemical analysis

Synthesis field

Optical fluid field

Advantages of microfluidic chip technology:

Compared with traditional experimental methods, microfluidic chips technology possesses many advantages, such as ultra-low reagent consumption, high integration, high degree of automation, high efficiency, environmental friendliness, miniaturization, easy portability, low cost, and simple manipulation.

Microfluidic chip process:

Common processing methods for microfluidic chips include photolithography and transfer, hot pressing, injection molding, nanoimprinting, and 3D printing. However, for some small and complicated microstructures, the results processed by the above methods are often not ideal. Recently, femtosecond laser micromachining method has gradually attracted attention due to its unique advantages.

The main advantages of femtosecond laser micromachining:

Write-through processing, no mask required, and greatly reducing process complexity

True 3D machining

High processing resolution

Diverse processing materials

 

The schematic diagram of machining system

 

An application case of femtosecond processing in the field of microfluidics

With its unique advantages, femtosecond laser two-photon processing method is favored by researchers in the field of microfluidics. The performance of a femtosecond laser source directly determines the quality of the processing system, so choosing a cost-effective and high-performance femtosecond laser source is very important for users. Usually, the chance of two-photon absorption is positively related to the square of the energy of the incident light, which means that only enough energy can generate two-photon excitation. Therefore, there are higher requirements for the laser power, pulse width, and repetition frequency parameters of the laser source. In response to the application needs in this direction, NPI Lasers has launched an independently developed 1030 nm ultrafast mode-locked fiber laser, Rainbow 1030 HP, with an average output power of watt level, a pulse width of less than 300 fs, and a repetition rate of up to MHz. With the highly performance and integrated, Rainbow 1030 HP perfectly meets the needs of scientific research users in the field of microfluidic control.