A variety of commercially available tape products were used to fabricate the microfluidic
structures including; Scotch® Permanent Double Sided Tape (19.0 mm width and 88.9 μm
thickness), Scotch ® Gloss Finish MultiTask Tape (19.0 mm width and 50.8 μm thickness),
Scotch® Shipping Packaging Tape (47.7 mm width and 78.7 μm thickness). These materials
were chosen because they were commercially available, inexpensive, and nearly ubiquitous in
modern laboratories. All these tapes laser micromachine well at 266 nm with no melting or
charring and minimal heat affected zone (HAZ).
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In order to maintain the reproducibility of the channels' dimensions in the microfluidic
devices, several parameters in the laser cutting process were kept constant. The output power
of the laser was set at 1.45 W and was checked continuously to verify stability. The frequency
of the laser (pulse repetition rate) was set to 25 kHz and the linear speed was 25 cm/s. We
chose a relatively fast speed in order to minimize thermal effects on the tape during ablation.