Normally Closed Microfluidic Valves with Microstructured Valve Seats: A Strategy for Industrial Manufacturing of Thermoplastic Microfluidics with Microvalves

This paper reports the characteristics of thermoplastic elastomer based normally closed microvalves with microstructured valve seats. Compared to the state of the art, we demonstrate, for the first time, a solution to the problematic issue of valve bonding that is frequently encountered with microfluidic valves during device assembly. Our configuration enables industrial manufacturing of fully thermoplastic microfluidic devices integrated with microvalves for a wide variety of biomedical applications.