Materials Research Science and Engineering Center

Microfabrication

The fabrication facility contains a 3" contact mask alignment and photoresist exposure system, fume hoods, spin coating station, non-contact wafer profilometer, PDMS mixer and degasser, oven, AC oxygen plasma, PDMS hole punch and a stereo zoom microscope.

The equipment is housed in a 250 sq. ft. class 10,000 clean room. In separate labs outside the cleanroom are a laser cutter, a thermopress for manufacturing plastic chips and several micro-CNC mills, including a 60,000 RPM 4-axis mill with micron precision for manufacturing molds and manifolds for the microfluidic devices. A MRSEC postdoc supervises the facility and trains students. Each summer a week-long hands-on microfluidics course is offered to researchers including grad students, postdocs, and industrial scientists and engineers from outside the Brandeis MRSEC.

MRSEC microfluidics scientists consult for a variety of companies and the fabrication facilities are available for use per fee. Direct inquires to the MRSEC microfluidics facility to mrsec-admin@brandeis.edu.

Microfluidic experiments are conducted in a dedicated laboratory. There are multiple microfluidic set-ups each equipped with video cameras, structured illumination sources, automated xyz scanning stages, computer controlled syringe pumps for volume driven flow and a set-up for computer controlled pressure driven flow.