Polymers, Methods Of Use Thereof, And Methods Of Decomposition Thereof

Abstract

Polymers, methods of use thereof, and methods of decomposition thereof, are provided. One exemplary polymer, among others, includes, a photodefinable polymer having a sacrificial polymer and a photoinitiator.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This is a Continuation Application that claims priority to application Ser. No. 11 / 451,144, filed Jun. 12, 2006, which claims priority to co-pending U.S. application entitled “Polymers, Methods of Use There, and Methods of Decomposition Thereof” having application Ser. No. 10 / 686,697, filed Oct. 16, 2003, which claims priority to U.S. provisional application entitled “Fabrication of Microchannels using Polynorbornene Photosensitive Sacrificial Materials” having Ser. No. 60 / 418,930, filed on Oct. 16, 2002, which is entirely incorporated herein by reference.STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT[0002]The U.S. Government has a paid-up license in this invention and the right in limited circumstances to require the patent owner to license others on reasonable terms as provided for by the terms of MDA awarded by the National Science Foundation (Grant #DMI-9980804) of the U.S. Government.TECHNICAL FIELD[0003]The present ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

This patent describes a method for creating three-dimensional structures using a photodefinable polymer that can be exposed to light to form a cross-linked structure. The polymer includes a sacrificial polymer and a photoinitiator. The method involves placing the polymer onto a surface, using a gray scale photomask to create the structure, and then removing portions of the polymer to form the final shape. The patent also describes a method for decomposing the polymer to create air-regions in the structure. The resulting structure has a substrate, an overcoat layer, and a polymer in a defined area within the overcoat layer. The polymer can be removed to create the air-region, and the resulting structure has a spatially-varying height.

Problems solved by technology

However, in spite of all of their promise, microfluidic devices are currently being used in a limited number of applications and are in general still rather simple devices in terms of their operational complexity and capabilities.

For example, in terms of making truly portable microanalytical systems, one of the current difficulties involves the simple integration of electronic (e.g., sensing methods) and fluidic elements into the same device.

One of the most important issues, which controls this ability to integrate functions into the same device, and thus controls the level of functionality of a microfluidic device is, the method used to fabricate the structure.

Both methods suffer from severe limitations and difficulties associated with integrating non-fluidic elements such as detectors with the microchannel system in the same substrate.

Other methods suffer from several limitations including the fact that they require on the order of ten processing steps to complete the sequence for a single level of microchannels.

Images