A Low-Cost Fabrication System for Manufacturing Soft-Lithography Microfluidic Master Molds

We developed a low-cost and high-resolution micro-fabrication system that enables quick and inexpensive manufacturing of master molds for fabricating microfluidic devices via softlithography. The system utilizes ultraviolet light-emitting diodes as a light source and dry film photoresists as patterning materials. Compared to cleanroom methods of fabricating master molds, our system demonstrates several advantages, including the ability to process in ambient air environments and normal lighting conditions, low costs, ease of operation, and short processing time. Moreover, the system achieves feature resolutions of 30 μm, aspect ratios larger than 1, and sidewall angles larger than 80o, which meet the requirements of a variety of microfluidic applications.