Fabrication of low-cost polydimethylsiloxane master from laminating foil for isotachophoresis separation on a chip

This article introduces use of laminating foils as the base for rapid polydimethylsiloxane master fabrication. The designs are punched directly to the foil structure with fabricated knife; therefore, the preparation time requires only a few minutes. This approach offers low-cost and variable possibility of master fabrication to produce microfluidic devices the size of dozens of microns. The resulting structures enable precise control of various device geometries, such as variable channel diameters and shapes in a single device. We describe the fabrication of microfluidic channels using these masters with polydimethylsiloxane polymer. The usability is demonstrated for the isotachophoretic separation of organic anionic dyes.