Laser Welding Clear-Clear PMMA Plastic Simulating a Microfluidic Chip
Jessica Tapia and Chima Uwazie
Advisor: Tanner Dunn (Jabil Inc.)
Laser Welding Clear-Clear PMMA Plastic Simulating a Microfluidic Chip
Jessica Tapia and Chima Uwazie
Advisor: Tanner Dunn (Jabil Inc.)
Laser welding of plastics has been in high demand in recent years, driven by its precision, cleanliness, and automation, presenting robust growth. It has been applied in automotive, medical devices, electronics, and packaging industries. Laser welding of transparent plastics has become an emerging application for many products, enabling them to achieve transparency. Two transparent plastic parts are clamped together where the laser is applied, which melts and bonds both parts at a concentrated area to form a weld. Transparent plastic products are very difficult to laser weld due to transparent plastics having low absorbency, which has brought the need of absorbers to be used to be able to achieve a hermetic seal while still maintaining the product's transparency. Based on research on clear-to-clear laser welding, it has been found that microfluidic chips have been in great demand in research and are being laser-welded for faster manufacturing, leading to find the best laser parameters to achieve a hermetic seal within the weld of two sheets of transparent plastic. In this project polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and an ethanol-based Clearweld absorber were used to make simulated microfluidic chips, testing different laser parameters such as laser power, and weld speed and how its weld strength, hermetic seal, and transparency have been affected. This project of clear-to-clear plastic laser welding will guide the future for a faster manufacturing process. Allowing for a significant number of medical devices to be easily accessible, as the demand in the market has increased over the years.