I want to know how I would create a pressure sensor and pump for
moving and detecting pressures along 30 - 75 uM cylindrical (or as
near as possible) channels, with two layers most likely glued together
to form the cylinder.

This could be done on silicon, but I would like to work with something
optically clear, glass, germanium oxide? Can I get germanium wafers,
if so how much are they and where do I get them? And second, could I
build I germanium oxide wafer by deposition of something? Can
germanium fuse with silicon to allow the channels to be clear while
the electronics and pumps/sensors are in god old silicon?

Right now the guy I am going to work training with is making simple
channels in lexan (polycarbonate) from home depot or somewhere, and
his "wafer" (cut from a sheet in a machine shop) was pretty scratched
up. He never did a clean etch on it, so I am pretty sure the working
device yield is pretty low. Alignment of layers could be a pain as
well if working devices don't match.

I couldn't find much searching for Ge/GeO2 wafers or GeO2 growth, but
I found the price to be $3/g, GeO2 is 4.228g/cm^3, so for less than
$30 I could have quite a bit of high quality real estate to develop
on.

We do have a glass dept here at RIT if we needed some way to make a
plate from molten germanium (maybe), unless there is another way to do
this.

Let me know what you think, I am new at this.

link on etching glass:
http://mail.mems-exchange.org/pipermail/mems-talk/1996-July/000672.html

unanswered question about how to etch GeO2
http://mail.mems-exchange.org/pipermail/mems-talk/2005-February/014949.html

-Nathan

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Nathan McCorkle
Rochester Institute of Technology
College of Science, Biotechnology/Bioinformatics