Polycarbonate Mold Copying Technique to Fabricate Microengineered Devices for Biophysical Studies

Microengineered devices made out of high aspect ratio flexible polymers provide very useful experimental means to study biophysical properties of living entities at various scales ranging from single cells to multicellular small organisms by enabling application of precise forces and deformations. However, fabrication of such devices require expensive and cumbersome mold fabrication procedures which limits appreciation of this technology by experimental biophysicists. Here, we report a novel microfabrication technique that we have developed for benchtop fabrication of microengineered devices outside the cleanroom so that they can be cheaply fabricated with high throughput. The polycarbonate (PC) mold copying technique consists of reverse molding of Polydimethylsiloxane parts fabricated from master molds in order to combine different microstructures into single monolithic PC mold for subsequent flexible polymer microdevice fabrication. We have characterized dimensional fidelity of the microstructures fabricated by this technique and fabricated various microstructures with feature sizes ranging from submicron level to tens of centimeters. Lastly, we used these devices to study fibroblast alignment dynamics, Young's Modulus of Drosophila embryo and cardiomyocyte contractility.