Development of an all-fluoroplastic microfluidic device applied as a nanoliter sample injector

A method was developed to fabricate an all-fluoroplastic microfluidic device using NEOFLON EFEP, a new fluoroplastic material. The device was successfully used as a nanoliter sample injector, which is very useful for various biological assays and chemical syntheses. The advantages of NEOFLON are that it is easily structured, it bonds at low temperatures, and it has chemical/physical robustness. NEOFLON microchannels 5μm in width and 5 μm in height were successfully fabricated for the prototype sample injector. The injector enabled the sample injection and metering of a 1.9 nL sample with less than 2% volume change. This suggests that the NEOFLON flow device is capable of the precise fluidic handling of a few nanoliter samples in volume.