When manufacturing glass chips, Micronit uses substrates that are divided into chips after processing. For dividing the bonded substrates into individual microfluidic glass chips, Micronit uses two techniques: breaking and dicing.

Breaking
By a normal process flow additional steps are taken to break out glass devices out of the processed substrates. This is a patented, proven high quality, fast and very cheap process step.

Breaking out the chips is possible from a device size of 10 x 10 mm and is done in a cleanroom environment. A major advantage over dicing is that no cooling fluids are needed. This reduces the risk of polluting the channels.

Dicing
For the fabrication of smaller chips and chips with tight tolerances on outer dimensions, Micronit can dice the chips with a conventional dicing saw. The machine Micronit works with is a CNC controlled, programmable dicing machine.

Specifications

• Dicing blade thickness: glass 300 µm; silicon 50 µm
• Materials: glass, silicon and hybrid (glass/silicon combinations)