Microfabrication of On-Demand Tapered Glass Capillaries by Etching Combined With Polishing

Micro fabrication of tapered glass capillaries with on-demand geometry is one of the essential issues to make specific devices for electrophysiological experiments, microfluidics, pharmaceutics. Capitalizing on chemical etching and mechanical polishing, we have developed a reliable microfabrication method to make tapered glass capillaries with on-demand size. The tip ending diameter reaches from several microns to hundreds of microns within one hour fabrication time, which can meet the requirement for microfabrication of microfluidic devices. To demonstrate the performance of the hybrid microfabrication method, the effect of etching time, and etchant concentrations are proposed. Furthermore, the surface quality of fabricated device is demonstrated to show the advantages of our microfabrication method. Then two typical applications such as the soft manipulation of zebrafish embryo and the production of emulsion droplets are performed. This hybrid microfabrication method of chemical etching combined with mechanical polishing shows great advantages to obtain on-demand size of tapered glass capillaries, and these features make it highly promising for microfabrication of glass capillary devices. [2021-0229]