Room-temperature bonding for plastic high-pressure microfluidic chips.

A generic method for the rapid, reproducible, and robust bonding of microfluidic chips fabricated from plastics has been developed and optimized. One of the bonding surfaces is exposed to solvent vapor prior to bringing the mating parts into contact and applying a load. Nanoindentation measurements performed by atomic force microscopy show that a reversible material softening occurs upon exposure to solvent vapor.