Centrifugal Spin Casting and Testing of Integrated Elastic PDMS Membranes in Lab-on-Disk Systems

Abstract Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is a material used widely in biotechnology applications; however, device assembly often necessitates plasma treatment and additional bonding and sealing steps, which complicates the process flow and requires extra equipment. The present study describes a technological process that avoids the use of plasma bonding by forming and curing PDMS layers directly on a pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) layer, utilizing a spinning disk of a centrifugal platform. The resulting membranes are inherently self-adhesive, enabling seamless integration into centrifugal microfluidic devices, or alternatively, creating the self-adhesive polydimethylsiloxane-pressure-sensitive adhesive (PDMS-PSA) patches that can be cut to desired geometries. Additionally, it is demonstrated that the same centrifugal setup can serve as a compact, affordable mechanical testbed to estimate the Young's Modulus of thin elastic membranes. The proposed technology streamlines PDMS membranes integration into microfluidic platforms and their evaluation.