All-glass chips bonded at low temperatures: what applications?
Materials and microfluidics. Low temperature glass bonding : new opportunities

All-glass chips, sealed by low-temperature bonding, combine the advantages of all-glass chips, namely :

• ability to perform recurring analyses ;

• easy cleaning of fluid channels ;

• superiority of glass for certain applications mentioned above,

  and the advantages of low-temperature bonding, notably that it does not damage any materials or nanostructures present in the chip that would be thermodegradable at temperatures above 300°C.

As already mentioned, a marketable lab-on-a-chip must include all stages of analysis: injection, extraction, separation and detection. Low-temperature sealing makes it possible to integrate thermodegradable structures or materials that can bring improvements to each stage of analysis. Among these possible integrations, we will discuss :

• localized polymer membranes...