Fabrication of planar nanofluidic channels in a thermoplastic by hot-embossing and thermal bonding

Abstract

Planar nanochannels are of particular significance in nanofluidics: keeping the width on the micrometre scale prevents the use of nanolithography while the depth stays in the nanometric range, i.e. below 100 nm. Fabrication of wide and shallow nanochannels in a plastic is known to be challenging due to the collapse of the structure during the sealing step. In this Technical Note, we demonstrate the simple and low-cost fabrication without nanolithography of monolithic and planar nanochannels by hot-embossing and bonding below the glass transition temperature.