Fabrication of Nanochannels in Silicon and Polymers

This paper reports the fabrication of planar nanochannels in silicon and thermoplastic. Conventional technologies such as reactive ion etching (RIE) and anodic bonding were used for fabricating the silicon-based nanochannels, while hot embossing and thermal bonding were used for polymer-based nanochannels. Due to the limit of photolithography, the lateral dimension of the channels are kept on the order of micrometers. The depth can be controlled precisely by etch rate or deposition rate. While fabrication technologies for nanochannels in silicon and glass are established and straightforward to implement, fabrication of planar nanochannels in a plastic is challenging because of the more severe collapsing of the structure during bonding. Besides the silicon technology, we demonstrate a simple and low-cost fabrication technology of planar nanochannels by hot-embossing in a thermoplastic and bonding below the glass transition temperature.