Electrical and Fluidic Packaging of Surface Micromachined Electro-Microfluidic Devices

Microfluidic devices have applications in chemical analysis, biomedical devices and ink-jets. An integrated microfluidic system incorporates electrical signals on-chip. Such electro-microfluidic devices require fluidic and electrical connection to larger packages. Therefore electrical and fluidic packaging of electro-microfluidic devices is key to the development of integrated microfluidic systems. Packaging is more challenging for surface micromachined devices than for larger bulk micromachined devices. However, because surface micromachining allows incorporation of electrical traces during microfluidic channel fabrication, a monolithic device results. A new architecture for packaging surface micromachined electro-microfluidic devices is presented. This architecture relies on two scales of packaging to bring fluid to the device scale (picoliters) from the macroscale (microliters). The architecture emulates and utilizes electronics packaging technology. The larger package consists of a circuit board with embedded fluidic channels and standard fluidic connectors. The embedded channels connect to the smaller package, an Electro-Microfluidic Dual-Inline-Package (EMDIP) that takes fluid to the microfluidic integrated circuit (MIC). The fluidic connection is made to the back of the MIC through Bosch etched holes that take fluid to surface micromachined channels on the front of the MIC. Electrical connection is made to bond pads on the front of the MIC.