Design and fabrication of a microsystem to handle biological objects

Abstract

Biological particle microhandling is a common operation in medicine and microbiology, and a lot of research work has been addressed to develop faster, cheaper and more efficient manipulation techniques. In this way, microsystem technologies play an important role because they can be used to fabricate microparticle manipulators. This paper describes the design and fabrication of a microsystem to handle biological objects, based on the dielectrophoretic effects. The development of the right technological option among the possibilities at disposal is also discussed. The proposed design, a whole microsystem including electrical, optical and fluidic interfaces, was developed employing gold and platinum metals, silicon micromachining, and photoresin patterning techniques. Furthermore, the structure of the utilized microelectrode arrays, as well as the resulting microchip are also reported.