Design and fabrication of poly(dimethylsiloxane) electrophoresis microchip with integrated electrodes

A novel poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) microchip integrated with platinum electrodes has been designed and fabricated using the Micro-electromechanical-systems (MEMS) technology. Since high voltage electrodes are integrated on the glass wafer using lift-off process, the microchip is a friendly-to-use system that does not need any extra mechanical apparatus for electrode insertion. To improve the sealing of microchip and ensure the uniformity of microchannel material, one PDMS membrane is formed on glass wafer with electrodes by pressing method. In this study, integrated microchip has been demonstrated as a capillary electrophoresis device for amino acids and satisfactory separation was achieved under separation electrical field strengths of 200 V/cm. The overall performance suggests that this novel microchip is advantageous and practical for the fabrication of lab-on-a-chip.