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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
Hydrophobic property of PDMS surface was improved by the 400 W UV-Vis lamp light irradiation in the atmospheric condition for several ten minutes. As a result of this surface treatment, the surface became to hydrophilic character for one month long. This surface treatment technique applied to PDMS micro-fluidic device and verified valve-less switching. The UV-Vis light irradiated to PDMS micro fluidic pattern with partly covered by aluminum foil. Finally inlet and outlets were connected 0.5 mm diameter tubes. The syringe pumps injected the distilled water into the inlet of the PDMS micro channel at the flow rates of 0.5, 5.0, and 50 μl/min for the both width channel. As results of water injection water flowed only the UV-Vis treated channel at the flow rates of 0.5 and 5.0 μl/min. On the other hand, the water flowed for all channels at the flow rate of 50 μl/min. This result was observed from 5.0 μl/min flow again for both width devices which dried by air. These results were occurred by the difference of the flow conductance and wettability. The mechanism of this hyrophilicity of PDMS was reported to form Si-O in the surface by means of glassy surface. From the IR spectra, the Si-O-Si peak shifted to higher wave number for UV-Vis irradiated PDMS than the untreated PDMS comparing with the other IR peaks. This result showed that the Si-O-Si network bonding of PDMS changed to the O-Si-O bonding around the surface.