Novel fabrication of glass microchip using amorphous silicon for comparison of channel surface properties on electrophoresis

We describe a new fabrication method for a glass microchip using amorphous silicon on the glass surface as an etch mask and a bonding interface for anodic bonding. We investigated the mobilities and bandwidths of electroosmotic flow (EOF) and analytes in microchip electrophoresis. Significant band broadening was observed in a microchip composed of a hybrid material (glass and silicon dioxide membrane) compared with a microchip of single material due to the nonuniformity of the surface charge density.