Fusion of metrology data for large-scale high-volume manufacturing of polymer-based microfluidic devices
by Vijay Shilpiekandula, Daniel J. Burns, Shiguang Li, Zhiguang Xu, Hayden K. Taylor, Kamal Youcef-Toumi, Zhongping Fang, Ivan Reading, Soon Fatt Yoon
International Journal of Nanomanufacturing (IJNM), Vol. 3, No. 4, 2009

Abstract: The promise of miniaturisation of large-scale laboratories on to a chip as small as a credit card has attracted the attention of biologists and manufacturing engineers alike. Mass production of functional microfluidic devices assembled on such chips necessitates accurate measurement of feature sizes and other properties as part of the manufacturing process. In this paper, we first review key metrology techniques needed for the characterisation of geometry, surface and sub-surface aspects of polymer-based microfluidic devices. We note that multiple instruments are often needed to overcome compromises between 1) range and resolution 2) bandwidth (speed) and resolution. This leads to the challenge of handling the data sets from the multiple instruments, i.e., aligning and integrating the data sets for accurate metrology. We propose the use of registration markers, or 'fiducial' markers, formed in polymer samples for aligning the data sets. Data sets recorded from sample instruments, an atomic force microscope, interferometer and confocal microscope are aligned against fiducial markers. As an example metrology situation, we show that more accurate measurements of channel widths can be achieved if data from multiple instruments are aligned using fiducial markers.

Online publication date: Tue, 28-Jul-2009

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