Thermoplastic fusion bonding is widely used to seal polymer microfluidic devices and optimal bonding protocol is required to obtain a successful bonding, strong bonding force without channel deformation. Besides, UV modification of the PMMA (poly-methyl methacrylate) is commonly used for chemical or biological application before the bonding process. However, study of thermal bonding for the UV modified PMMA was not reported yet. Unlike pristine PMMA, the optimal bonding parameters of the UV modified PMMA were 103˚C, 71 kPa, and 35 minutes. A very low aspect ratio micro channel (AR=1:100, 20 μm depth and 2000 μm width) was successfully bonded (over 95%, n>100). Moreover, thermal bonding of multi stack PMMA chips was successfully demonstrated in this study. The results may applicable to fabricate a complex 3 dimensional microchannel networks.
