Soft Embossing Technology

Soft embossing technology has many useful technical features and advantages for producing plastic microfluidic devices:

High-fidelity reproduction of all features from macroscale to sub-micron dimensions
Fast master fabrication (as short as 1 day for macromachined masters) yield the ability for rapid prototyping, without sacrificing quality or reproducibility of parts
Soft tools eliminate the need for ejector pins and draft angles, while allowing re-entrant features such as threaded ports
Testing during prototyping phase can be done in the plastic of choice, rather than being limited to choosing among plastics that can be milled
Choice of embossed plastic (as broad as for injection molding) allows selection of key properties such as fluorescence, optical clarity, and solvent compatibility
Soft embossing tooling is much less expensive than an injection mold. Each soft tool can typically produce several hundred parts, but new tools can be cast from the master as needed in less than a day.