Microfluidic Chips

The ability to integrate metal electrodes into glass and polymer microfluidic chips allows a wide variety of geometries to be created, such as interdigitated electrodes, heaters and temperature sensors. Applications include impedance detection and temperature control in microreactors and the generation of electrical fields for dielectrophoresis. Platinum is most frequently used as an electrode material because of its excellent chemical and heat resistance. A wide range of metals can be deposited onto the microfluidic glass or polymer chips, including gold, copper, titanium and chrome. The chip’s metal feature size can be as small as 2 µm. Metal layers can also be deposited on the inside surface of the micro-channels.