Applied Surface Science 254 (2007) 11741178 www.elsevier.

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Fibre laser welding for packaging of disposable polymeric microuidic-biochips

Andrei Boglea *, Alexander Olowinsky, Arnold Gillner
Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology, Steinbachstrasse 15, 52074 Aachen, Germany Received 23 May 2007; received in revised form 24 July 2007; accepted 7 August 2007 Available online 11 August 2007

Abstract An essential step in the development of microuidic-biochips is represented by the assembly process. Among the thermal bonding processes used for the assembly of such devices the laser transmission welding of polymers offers several advantages, especially when it comes about local deposition of energy and minimum thermal distortion in the joining components. The research presented in this paper proposes a new approach for the laser transmission welding developed for the packaging of disposable polymeric microuidic-biochips. The new approach based on the use of a bre laser and a tailored method for the laser energy deposition was tested on the sealing of polymeric biochips made from plexiglas and polypropylene with a covering foil. This method combines the characteristics of the polymer contour welding and quasi-simultaneous welding and allows the achievement of contamination-free, high quality weld seams as narrow as 100 mm with a high dynamic making it suitable for the high volume production also. # 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Laser transmission welding; Fibre laser; Microuidic devices; Polymer welding

1. Introduction The nowadays Microsystems enjoy a great success experiencing an increased acceptance in various application elds starting from automotive, home goods, information and telecommunication up to bio-medical applications [1,2]. Beside the enhancements that they enable, one signicant aspect that stays behind this impressive growth of the micro-devices is the reduction of their cost-per-unit. The recent technology advances that made possible the fabrication of Microsystems from polymeric materials instead of glass or silicon have signicantly contributed to the optimization of their cost-perunit. Eloquent examples for polymeric Microsystems are the microuidic devices. Their development represents the main driving factor for the Microsystems growth within the biomedical application elds. The challenges for the nowadays microuidic chips are generated mainly by the development of the complex Point-ofCare diagnostic devices, which are only a few steps away to

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 241 8906 217; fax: +49 241 8906 121. E-mail address: andrei.boglea@ilt.fraunhofer.de (A. Boglea). 0169-4332/$ see front matter # 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.apsusc.2007.08.013

enter the global market. They enable testing and results capturing at the patient bedside, providing quickly (in the range of minutes) the necessary information to aid clinical decisionmaking subsequently improving the quality of care for the patient. For such complex devices unit procedures such as: capillary electrophoresis (CE), polymerase chain reaction (PCR), sample pre-concentration, genomic DNA extraction, DNA hybridisation and chromatography have to be miniaturized and carried out on a single-step microuidic chip [35]. The high complexity and miniaturization required for the development of the latest generation of microuidic chips for the Point-of-Care diagnostic devices raise several technological problems. If fabrication problems were partly overcome, there are still several aspects under investigation related to the complete construction of these microuidic devices. One of these aspects is related to their packaging. Usually the polymeric microuidic devices with the complex microchannels, reservoirs and reaction chambers have to be sealed with a covering foil or with another polymeric part. Multiple joining approaches such as: gluing, lamination, ultrasonic welding, resistive welding, laser welding, etc. are currently investigated. Among these joining techniques the laser polymer welding shows several advantages. Firstly, being a contactless

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processing is leads to no contamination of the functional areas of the microuidic chips. Secondly, it is a fast process allowing the processing on a complete microuidic chip in only a few seconds. Finally, laser processing has the benet of inducing a reduced stress into the joining materials due to the highly localized energy deposition. Minimum heat affected zones are extremely important for the biological probes handled within the microuidic biochips, where typically the thermal gradients should not exceed 4570 8C for more than 2 min. Over the last years the laser transmission welding of polymeric materials has shown its positive aspects and it was successfully implemented in various industrial applications. However, the process is limited concerning the minimum weld seam width and maximum processing speed. So far, minimum weld seams of around 300 mm could be achieved through laser contour welding, while in the case of the newest microuidic chips, because of the high functionalized surfaces, weld seams with a width of around 100 mm are required. An increased number of functions are integrated on a reduced surface on the chip leading to extreme narrow joining areas. Up to now the possibility to reach these requirements was represented by the laser mask welding. Nevertheless, this method has the drawbacks of being cost intensive due to the use of a dedicated mask for each type of devices to be sealed and high amount of wasted laser energy (efcient energy is only the laser energy passing through the mask openings), it is an inexible technique allowing variations in the design of the joining contour only with a signicant effort. Furthermore, it involves an additional effort for the precise alignment of the mask relative to the joining components. The principle of laser transmission welding represents the most used approach for the laser welding of polymeric materials [6,7]. According to this approach one of the joining partners has to be optically transparent for the wavelength of the laser radiation while the other one is absorbent. Prior to the weld, the two parts are brought into mechanical contact and a dened force is applied in order to compensate the expulsion forces generated at the joining interface during the welding process. The laser beam passes through the transparent partner it is absorbed by the second one and subsequently transformed into heat. Then, by heat conduction the transparent part is heated and a mixture of the two molten materials is realized. The process basics are schematically illustrated in Fig. 1. Under these circumstances the present paper aims to introduce a novel approach for the maskless laser welding of polymeric Microsystems. Based on elements of novelty from the eld of high speed scanning technology and the latest advancements of the laser sources a new technique for welding of polymers was developed. The new approach, called Transmission Welding by an Incremental Scanning Technique (TWIST), allows the achievement of weld seams as narrow as 100 mm for a processing speed up to 300 mm/s. 2. Experimental TWIST is based on the overlapping of a high dynamic movement of the laser beam over the movement along the

Fig. 1. The principle of transmission laser welding of thermoplastics.

welding contour. The high dynamic movement can be circular, linear, etc. In the presented work, a high dynamic circular movement was selected. By these means, for each increment of the welding contour (each circle) the laser beam is passing over the material several times due to the circular movement and by a certain overlapping of the laser spot a homogeneous weld seam is achieved. For the characterization of the new technique initial experiments ware carried out on injection moulded polypropylene (PP) plates with a thickness of 1 mm. Black and translucent plates were used in an overlap joint conguration. The black plates have 0.5 wt% carbon black content. Finally, this approach was tested on sealing of plexiglas (PMMA) and PP microuidic devices with a 75 mm and 100 mm transparent covering foil. The experimental setup used for performing the investigation was based on a laser Pick-and-Join tool developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT [8,9]. The Pick-and-Join tool is based on the integration of a laser source, a galvanometric mirror system, a device adapted gripper, a process monitoring system and a precise positioning system. A single mode bre laser system was selected as laser source for the Pick-and-Join tool. The bre laser has a 9 W maximum output power and it is continuously emitting at a wavelength of l = 1112 nm. The bre coupled laser beam is guided into the scan head and then trough an F-Theta lens with a focal length of 100 mm which was mounted instead of the device adapted gripper. The theoretical focal spot on the work piece is around 30 mm for a collimated laser beam with a 5 mm diameter. The compact scan head was used for the high dynamic and precise movement of the laser beam according to the PC controllable welding path. Because the used bre laser has a collimated output beam of only 460 mm a beam expander was used to get a collimated beam of 5 mm. The beam expander consisting of standard optical elements, not optimized for the wavelength of the laser beam, affected the beam quality and consequently a

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real focused spot of 70 mm was achieved instead of 30 mm theoretically calculated. For the supply of the necessary process force a pneumatic clamping device was used. The overlapped joining components were pressed by a pneumatic cylinder against a glass plate which is transparent for the laser beam allowing it to reach the joining area. 2.1. The irradiation strategy The high beam quality of the single mode bre lasers (M2  1.1) offers the advantage that very small laser focal spots can be achieved. However, when using such high quality laser beam and very small focal spots, the power densities are in the order of I = 106 W/cm2. These laser intensities might be ideal for cutting or welding of metals but in the case of polymer welding, where the commonly used laser intensities are in the range of I = 100300 W/cm2, they would lead to overheating and instantaneous material degradation even for low power levels. Therefore, in order to overcome these aspects an innovative strategy for the coupling of the laser energy into the materials and nally to achieve a thermally optimized laser welding process was developed. A schematic representation of the computer programmed movement of the laser beam according to the considered irradiation strategy can be seen in Fig. 2. This irradiation strategy is based on the overlap of a high dynamic circular movement with the normal movement along the welding contour. The compactness of the laser scan head and consequently the low inertia of the deecting mirrors allow the high dynamic movement of the laser beam according to the programmed path. The peripheral velocity of the circular movement can reach up to 4000 mm/s while the laser beam is scanned along the welding contour with a dened feed rate up to 300 mm/s. Since the irradiation strategy involves the overlapping of two individual movements two main aspects have to be taken into consideration. First, a correlation between the parameters of these movements has to be done in order to obtain an overall movement as shown in Fig. 2 and secondly, the parameters of the combined movements have to be adapted to the focus diameter of the laser beam in order to determine an optimal overlapping of the laser spot and nally to achieve a homogeneous weld seam. It was established that for an optimal irradiation strategy (Eq. (1)) the frequency of the
Fig. 3. Inappropriate correlation between the combined movements of the irradiation strategy.

circular movement has to be chosen between 1 up to 2 times the feed rate divided by the radius of the circular movement. f 1; . . . ; 2 v mm=s ; r mm (1)

where f is the frequency of the circular movement, the number of circles per second, r is the radius of the circles and v represents the feed rate. If the frequency has a lower value than the recommended value range, then the laser beam will not describe circles anymore along the weld contour and as a consequence the weld seam will have a transversal asymmetric shape as shown in Fig. 3. In the opposite case, when the frequency is higher than the recommended interval, depending on the spot diameter and material properties overheating might occur and the polymeric materials can be damaged. This last situation points out the importance of the second main aspect of the irradiation strategy concerning the determination of the optimal overlapping for the laser spot. If we consider in a simplied model two consecutive circles from the welding contour, as shown in Fig. 4, based on the distance between the circles and the spot diameter two situations can be distinguished. In a rst case due to an inappropriate setting of the parameters for the combined movements the distance between the circles is higher than twice the spot diameter. This leads to no overlap of the laser spot Fig. 4a and subsequently to gaps in the weld seam. In a second situation, the distance between the consecutive circles is less than twice the spot diameter and therefore an optimal overlap of the laser spot can be set, as showed in Fig. 4b.

Fig. 2. Irradiation strategy principle.

Fig. 4. Overlap of the laser spot.

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The distance between two consecutive circles from the welding contour can be determined with the Eq. (2). d v mm=s ; f circles=s (2)

where d is the distance between two consecutive circles, v is the feed rate and f is the number of circles per second. Afterwards, comparing this distance with the spot diameter the overlap of the laser spot can be calculated with Eq. (3). h 2w0 d 100; 2w0 (3)

where h is the efciency of the spot overlapping and w0 is the laser spot radius. The optimal laser spot overlap leads to the achievement of high quality, homogeneous weld seams. The corresponding adjustment of the parameters for both movements of the proposed irradiation strategy avoids the thermal damage of the polymeric materials even if very high laser intensities are used. 3. Results Using the developed method for the welding of the PP plates optically high quality weld seams with thicknesses from 500 mm down to around 100 mm were achieved. The weld seam width is given by adding the diameter of the circular movement with the diameter of the laser spot. Therefore, the adjustment of the radius for the circular movement will lead to the achievement of the desired weld seam thickness (Fig. 2). The feed rate used was varied up to 300 mm/s. Fig. 5 shows the optical appearance of seams with a width of 500 mm and 130 mm realized at a processing speed of 200 mm/s and a laser power of only 5.9 W, while the laser power needed in the case of conventional contour welding for such feed rates is signicantly higher. Higher feed rates were possible for the narrower weld seams. The irregular shape of the narrower weld seams is due to the imperfect clamping of the joining components. However, the aimed weld seam width was

Fig. 6. (a) TWIST heat affected zone (HAZ) for a 500 mm wide weld seam; (b) HAZ for a weld seam obtained through the conventional contour welding.

Fig. 5. Micrographs of 500 mm wide weld seams (outer weld seams) and 130 mm wide weld seams.

approached showing the benets of the proposed technique and by an optimization of the process pressure upon the joining components high value welds can be achieved. In the case sealing of microuidic devices another critical aspect beside to the overall thermal stress is represented by the sealing of very narrow channels. For channels with a width under 100 mm there is the danger of collapsing the channel walls due to a to high temperature input causing the closure of the channel and compromising its functionality. Here, the new technique developed TWIST comes to make the difference in comparison to the other well established thermal joining approaches, but also compared to the normal laser contour welding. As shown in Fig. 6a the heat affected zone (HAZ) has a signicantly reduced depth compared to the usual appearance of the HAZ for a laser weld seam achieved through a conventional laser contour welding process (Fig. 6b). This effect is achieved because of the high dynamic circular movement which leads to a uniform energy deposition over the cross-section of the weld seam. In the case of normal laser contour welding the energy deposition is stronger in the middle of the weld seam and decreases to the sides causing a deeper HAZ. The reduced HAZ obtained by TWIST allows the successful sealing of microuidic channels as narrow as 50 mm and even smaller. Fig. 7 shows the complete sealing of a test microuidic

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be achieved making possible the packaging of the new microuidic devices with increased complexity requiring very narrow weld seams. Furthermore, a reduced depth of the heat affected zone was achieved allowing the sealing of microuidic channels with a width less than 100 mm. By these means a feasible alternative for the demanding mask welding technique can be given as well as for the other micro-joining approaches. In order to realize a complete characterization of the new technique beside the optical appearance of the weld seams in the next investigations cross-sections and tensile tests have to be considered. The reduction of the laser spot down to the theoretical calculated value of 30 mm has to be done also to investigate the possibility of achieving weld seam even under 100 mm.
Fig. 7. PMMA microuidic device sealed with a 75 mm cover foil.

References
[1] J. Ouellette, A new wave of microuidic devices, Ind. Physicist (2003) 14. [2] J. Clayton, Go with the microow, Nat. Methods 2 (8) (2005) 621. [3] Y.-C. Lin, W.-D. Wu, C.-P. Jen, G.-G. Wu, C.-C. Chang, Experimental investigation of a microuidic driving system for bi-directional manipulation, Sensor Actuat. (2004) 142. [4] K.-P. Kamper, W. Ehrfeld, J. Dopper, V. Hessel, H. Lehr, H. Lowe, Th. Richter, A. Wolf, Microuidic components for biological and chemical microreactors, MEMS 97, Nagoya, Japan, 1997, p. 338. [5] A. Morrissey, G. Kelly, J. Alderman, Selection of materials for reduced stress packaging of a microsystem, Sensor Actuat. (1999) 178. [6] U.-A. Russek, Innovative trends in laser beam welding of thermoplastics, in: WLT-Conference on Lasers in Manufacturing LIM, Munich, (2003), p. 105. a , The effect of parameters [7] A. Jansson, S. Kouvo, A. Salminen, V. Kujanpa on laser transmission welding of polymers, in: International Congress on Applications of Lasers & Electro-Optics ICALEO, 2003. [8] L. Bosse, A. Boglea, R. Poprawe, Microsyst. Technol. 12 (2006) 604. [9] A. Boglea, L. Bosse, A. Olowinsky, S. Bou, Fiber laser pick-and-join tool for welding of thermoplastics, in: International Congress on Applications of Lasers & Electro-Optics ICALEO, Scottsdale, USA, (2006), p. 383.

device with a transparent 75 mm covering foil. The microuidic channels have a variable width along the entire device between 200 mm and 50 mm. The sealing of the narrowest microchannels was possible without causing the collapse of the channel walls. The welds seams width was 500 mm while the feed rate was varied starting from 30 mm/s up to 150 mm/s. 4. Conclusions The rst experimental results showed that through the presented approach the micro-welding of polymers with bre lasers is possible without thermal degradation of the material despite the high laser intensities and also that high processing speed up to 300 mm/s can be used for performing high quality weld seams. Weld seams with a width of around 100 mm could