Plasma enhanced bonding of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) with parylene

PDMS and parylene are among the most widely used polymers in biomedical and microfluidic applications. However, integration of both these materials on a single device has not been possible due to low bond strength achieved using conventional methods. In this paper, we demonstrate plasma-enhanced bonding of PDMS slabs with parylene thin films (from 0.4MPa for PDMS glued assembly to >;1.4MPa tensile strength enhancement) without the usage of high temperature or pressure. This was achieved by systematic investigation of bonding parameters using Taguchi´s design of experiment method. The application of this bond has also been demonstrated in PDMS-parylene microfluidic channels.