An experimental study on the side-opening filling process at the interface between microchannels with different widths

Micro/nanochannel is of great importance due to its wide applications in micro total analysis system. In a given micro/nanofluidic device, the nanochannel and microchannel can works as function provider and reagent delivering passage, respectively. The easiest way to fabricate micro/nanochannel is depositing material onto a predefined microchannel until nanometer-sized pattern is obtained. Although the deposition process inside the microchannel has been studied before, the filling performance at the side-opening, the connection between microchannels with different widths, is limited studied. The different filling performance at side-opening will lead to a distinct geometrical size. In this work, side-opening filling process during a low pressure chemical vapor deposition of silicon dioxide onto pre-etched microchannels with patterns of straight, triangle and rhombus shapes was preliminarily studied. A filling factor was defined to describe the side-opening filling performance. The present results indicated that the side-opening filling will be affected by the side-opening width, the depth of the microchannel and the microchannel shape.