There are tons of APTES/GA treatment protocols on the net, but most of them relate to treatment of entire surface of glass slide/PDMS slab/cover glass.
What I am more interested in is, treatment method for glass slide surface inside of PDMS device channel. (In channel method?)
I would be grateful if someone can share their personal experience with different methods, and outcomes.
Thank you,
For treatment of an assembled device APTES aminopropyltriethoxysilane is generally not recommended since it generally requires a hydrolysis condensation step. Aminopropyltrimethoxysilane reacts better under near anhydrous conditions. Cyclicazasilanes are extremely effective at room temperature, but they are always secondary amines. The following link may be helpful: https://www.gelest.com/themencode-pdf-viewer/?file=https://www.gelest.com:443/wp-content/uploads/Goods-PDF-brochures-couplingagents.pdf
OK, so, I am going to share my experience and opinion that might be somehow helpful for your study.
First of all, I never used GA but like you said there exist a lot of APTES/GA protocols on the net. What I used was APTES and TEA (triethylamine) to introduce amine groups on the surface. My surface consisted of silicon nitride (Si3N4). The method I used I believe was first introduced by Prof. Gruber from Linz and it goes like this;
After cleaning your surface with EtOH or chloroform or w/e you need to use, you place 30 μL APTES and 10 μL TEA in a desiccator filled with Argon together with your surface. Wait 2 hours. Remove APTES and TEA. Let the surface wait inside the desiccator for another 48 hours. Argon provides the inert enviornment for CVD to take place. Perhaps you can use this technique and use GA instead of TEA? With PDMS you have the methyl groups I suppose (might still work). With glass slides I KNOW that it works just fine. (Just carefully clean it first)
For the second part of the question though, I also had some struggling with channels... I am not sure whether this gas phase method would work for channels or not, although it worths trying! It's an open void afterall, and the molecules just might diffuse in it.
I hope this helps...
Cheers!
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