Microfluidic chips have become a critical component in advanced applications such as biochemical analysis, medical diagnostics, drug development, and environmental monitoring because of their ability to precisely control fluid flow at the microscale. The functionality of these chips is highly dependent on the precision and dimensional stability of microchannel structures formed on them. While injection molding is an efficient method for a mass production of microfluidic chips, it is required to minimize undesirable deformation due to thermal and mechanical stresses, which can degrade the overall performance. This study investigated global (Macro-scale) and local (Micro-scale) deformation behaviors of injection-molded microfluidic chips. Effects of processing parameters, including mold temperature, melt temperature, filling time, and packing pressure, were investigated. The Taguchi-based design of experiments approach was employed to systematically analyze these effects and to determine optimal conditions to minimize deformation.

Recently, with the expansion of application of polymer composite materials, high levels of deformation compensation actions have been developed. However, there is a problem of high-temperature viscoelasticity that occurs over time after completing the injection molding process. In this study, changes of mechanical properties of the Moldflow program for injection molding were analyzed to verify the viscoelasticity phenomenon through deformation analysis. In addition, deformation analysis of plastic injection molded products according to arrangement of three ribs was conducted and two products with different geometric shapes of the same function were compared. As a result, it was possible to reflect the viscoelastic effect by reducing the elastic modulus and shear modulus of the material. It was confirmed that the geometric shape with thick ribs formed in multiple longitudinal directions was mainly responsible. On the surface of the product where the rib arrangement was parallel and perpendicular to the flow direction, the orientation was orthogonal to the linear direction and the maximum residual stress was 81.17 MPa, which showed the largest value. It was judged that viscoelastic phenomena could be predicted and that an arrangement of parallel and perpendicular ribs that might intersect should be avoided.

The purpose of this study was to develop an efficient mold heating technology by an embedded heating unit. To localize the heating effect in the mold core and prevent heat transfer to surrounding mold plates, the core module with embedded heating unit was assembled to a mold plate in a detachable manner. The detachable core module was then separated from the mold plate when the mold was opened, and thus could be rapidly heated by the embedded heater. The heated core contacted with the mold plate when the mold was closed, and could be cooled by heat conduction to the mold plate of which thermal inertia was much larger than that of the core module. To verify thermal efficiency of the proposed structure, heat transfer simulation was performed with an experimental validation. Mold filling simulation was also performed to investigate the effect of mold heating on improving flow characteristics through a thin and narrow channel. Injection molding experiments were also conducted by adopting the proposed embedded heating module.