A deep microfluidic absorbance detection cell replicated from a thickly stacked SU-8 dry film resist mold

Abstract

Dry film resist SU-8 was used to make a thick mold for soft lithography of a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) microfluidic chip with deep channels. The stacking of the SU-8 film enabled an ultra-thick (up to 500 μm) resist process on Si wafer. This process was fast and highly reproducible compared with the conventional liquid SU-8 process. The deep channel in the PDMS chip was utilized as a micro-flow cell for sensitive absorbance measurement. Sunset Yellow FCF dye was used to demonstrate absorption spectroscopy in the deep channel. Since the channel depth was proportional to the optical path length, which was proportional to the absorbance value, the PDMS chip achieved a detection limit (15.9 μM) comparable to U- or Z-shaped microfabricated absorbance detection cells in glass. Calibration curves for different solution concentrations were obtained with good R² values (∼1).