Acetone and many other organic solvents cause silicones to swell. (The
physical mechanism has to do with changes in how the polymer chains pack
together depending on the polarity of the solvent.) As the PDMS changes
size, it will increase the strain at the PDMS/silicon interface, causing
the film to peel off.

Note that this is why you should never wash a device in acetone if PDMS is
part of that device.

Alik Widge
Carnegie Mellon University

--On Sunday, May 29, 2005 11:38 PM -0400 Yi Zhao  wrote:

> I found in my experiments that acetone is good to release bonded PDMS
> surfaces. But I do not how it works. Does anyone have experience or can
> provide some references what exactly acetone does to the interfacial
> adhesion of PDMS?