Flexible packaging of solid-state integrated circuit chips with elastomeric microfluidics

A flexible technology is proposed to integrate smart electronics and microfluidics all embedded in an elastomer package. The microfluidic channels are used to deliver both liquid samples and liquid metals to the integrated circuits (ICs). The liquid metals are used to realize electrical interconnect...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Scientific reports 2013-01, Vol.3 (1), p.1098, Article 1098
Main Authors:	Zhang, Bowei, Dong, Quan, Korman, Can E., Li, Zhenyu, Zaghloul, Mona E.
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Aluminum CMOS Elastomers Electronics Integrated circuits Lab-on-a-chip Metals Microfluidics Packaging Polydimethylsiloxane Semiconductors Sensors Silicon wafers
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	A flexible technology is proposed to integrate smart electronics and microfluidics all embedded in an elastomer package. The microfluidic channels are used to deliver both liquid samples and liquid metals to the integrated circuits (ICs). The liquid metals are used to realize electrical interconnects to the IC chip. This avoids the traditional IC packaging challenges, such as wire-bonding and flip-chip bonding, which are not compatible with current microfluidic technologies. As a demonstration we integrated a CMOS magnetic sensor chip and associate microfluidic channels on a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate that allows precise delivery of small liquid samples to the sensor. Furthermore, the packaged system is fully functional under bending curvature radius of one centimetre and uniaxial strain of 15%. The flexible integration of solid-state ICs with microfluidics enables compact flexible electronic and lab-on-a-chip systems, which hold great potential for wearable health monitoring, point-of-care diagnostics and environmental sensing among many other applications.
ISSN:	2045-2322 2045-2322