Microsystem Technologies for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

The measurement of substances in the blood was one of the first biomedical applications of MEMS devices. Nowadays, personal glucometers are inexpensive, and some of them are starting to include an insulin pump, also built with MEMS technology, which is able to deliver insulin to the patient when the measured glucose level is too high. One of the most important goals of the research in BioMEMS is the fabrication of a lab-on-chip (LOC) device, where all the needed components to perform extraction, movement, control, processing, analysis, etc. of biological fluids are present. This LOC device would be a truly miniaturized laboratory, which would fulfill many of today's needs in portable medicine. To accomplish a task like building a LOC, many smaller parts must be considered. In the rest of the sections of this chapter, these parts will be discussed. Section 2 will discuss in detail the fabrication processes for the materials described above, which are the most commonly used now. In Section 3, the issue of power supply will be considered, and some solutions to integrate the microfluidic power in the microsystem will be presented. Section 4will deal with control and regulation of biological fluids inside the chip. In Section 5, the integration of the different components will be discussed, giving some examples of actual devices, and finally in Section 6, some conclusions will be remarked.