Integration of Tungsten Micro-Heaters and Polymer Microfluidic for the Cell Sorting Application

Cell sorting is an important diagnostic tool in medical field to separate different type of cells. Various techniques are employed for sorting with main mechanism being cell analysis and then separation either by electric or magnetic field. In this paper we explain the fabrication process for tungsten micro-heaters on silicon and polymer microfluidic for a formation of a generic platform that can be used for the various cell sorting applications. Polymer material is not only used for the formation of channel for fluidics movement but also used as bonding interface between the silicon wafer and the glass. We report on the bonding strength of the polymer material. It shows that our devices can withstand a pressure in excess of 3 bar which is more than sufficient for most microfluidic applications such as cell sorting. Characterization of micro stream bubble generation life cycle is presnted. The sorting efficiency of our device is reported, with initial characterization done beads to determine sorting rate and sorting yield. We achieved sorting rate of 1,000 beads/s with sorter purity of up to 98 % in initial investigations.