Surface effects at polymeric interfaces in capillary driving process

The growing interest in biological micro-array and Lab-on-Chip (LOC) is justified by the possibility of reducing the sample volume, processing time and costs. By means microfluidics seems to be the prevalent tool for the integration of manifold processes in miniaturized devices. Anyway at a sub-millimeter scale the liquid behavior is affected by geometric confinement and wetting properties. In order to confine the liquid sample inside the LOC buried channels we have performed the sealing by poly (dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS), a silicon-based bi-component elastomer. The filling dynamics changes at changing of the polymer mixing ratio of the pre-polymer and the curing agent. In fact, a different concentration of cross-linker modifies the elastic, adhesion and wettability properties of the cover-slip.