company news about Unlocking Micrometer-Level Precision: UV LED Curing Empowers Niche High-Value-Added Industries

While UV LED curing technology is making waves in mainstream industries such as printing, electronics, and wood coatings, it is playing an even more crucial role in some high-value-added niche markets. Although these applications have a smaller market size, they demand extreme precision in curing processes, requiring micron-level accuracy, ultra-low heat generation, and specific material properties. Among these, microfluidic chip manufacturing and precision optical component assembly are two irreplaceable and important areas for UV LED curing technology.

Microfluidics, commonly known as "lab-on-a-chip," is a technology that controls and manipulates fluids within tiny channels, widely used in disease diagnosis, drug screening, and biochemical analysis. It enables miniaturization, automation, and high-throughput in biochemical experiments by integrating complex microchannels, valves, and pumps onto a single chip.

• Thermal damage and deformation: When using thermal bonding or thermal curing processes, high temperatures can cause the polymer substrate (such as PDMS or PMMA) to expand and contract, leading to deformation or blockage of the tiny channels, directly affecting the accuracy of fluid control.
• Biocontamination: Using adhesives containing volatile organic solvents (VOCs) can leave residues that seep into the channels, contaminating fluid samples and affecting the chip's biocompatibility, rendering it unusable for sensitive cell or protein analyses.

• Low-temperature curing, eliminating deformation: UV LEDs emit narrow-band ultraviolet light, generating very little infrared heat, earning them the title of "cold light source." This ensures extremely low heat input during chip bonding, completely eliminating the risk of thermal damage or deformation to the polymer substrate and internal microstructure, guaranteeing the geometric accuracy of the channels.
• Solvent-free, high purity: The UV curing adhesive itself is solvent-free; the curing process is solely a photopolymerization reaction. This avoids any volatiles or residues contaminating the channels, resulting in a final product with excellent bioinertness, suitable for directly processing high-purity biological samples.
• Fast, controllable, and precise bonding: Manufacturers can precisely align the top and bottom cover plates of the chip to the micrometer level, then use a high-intensity UV LED array for instantaneous (within seconds) curing. This "positioning first, locking later" capability ensures high consistency and extremely low yield loss in mass production.