Fabrication of a based fluidic chip equipped with porous silicon filter and micro-channels

In this paper, a new design and fabrication method for a micro electro mechanical system (MEMS)-based micro-fluidic system that includes an articulated filter with micro-channel is proposed. An anodic reaction that involves chemical etching is used to produce a porous silicon (PS) layer to be applied to a micro-fluidic filter. The micro-fluidic filter is fabricated with vertical micro-pores by an anodic reaction process using a (110) wafer. Physical etching based on a micro-sandblaster process, and wet chemical etching using either tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) or hydrofluoric, nitric, and acetic (HNA) acid solution are applied to form the micro-channels that function as an essential factor in the micro-fluidic system. These independently-fabricated filter and channel wafers are bonded using a dry film resist (DFR). The characteristics of the filter fabricated on a (100) wafer are analyzed. Moreover, the functional performances of the channels formed by different methods are compared. The proposed micro-fluidic system with porous silicon micro-filters might be applied to bio-material reaction chambers, such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) chambers and DNA separation devices that require a filter.