Gareth,

I am not familiar with the press that you mentioned, however, I do have
a bit of knowledge about hot embossing in general (although I am more
familiar with the EVG520HE system).

The two critical elements for hot embossing are temperature and pressure
uniformity.  If either of these is less than optimal, than the imprint
depth will suffer - this effect becomes more profound for smaller
embossed features.

This also holds true for thermocompression bonding (the EVG520HE is
based on a wafer-level bonding system platform).

Best Regards,
Chad Brubaker


-----Original Message-----
From: Gareth Jenkins
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 8:08 AM
To: General MEMS discussion
Subject: [mems-talk] Hot press for microfluidic structures

Hi

I am looking into hot embossing microfluidic structures in polymers
(Topas COC and PMMA).
For this, I am considering buying a Carver hot press (12 ton manual
heated press, model 4386).
I have seen a few publications which cite the Carver press but they
don't give details of the exact model used.
Does anyone know if this is the most appropriate system for
microfluidics?
I will use SU-8 on silicon as the embossing tool (possibly Nickel
coated) and would also like to use it for thermal bonding.
Best regards

Gareth