Development and experimental characterization of micromachined electromagnetic probes for biological manipulation and stimulation applications

We present the design, fabrication and experimental characterization of a new micromachined electromagnetic probe, which can be readily adapted to various biological manipulation and stimulation applications. The micro electromagnetic probe consists of a protruding (out-of-chip), sharp Permalloy needle embedded into a three-dimensional gold conducting coil. The probe fabrication is carried out using traditional surface micromachining processes coupled with assembly techniques. This hybrid approach significantly reduces fabrication difficulties and provides a simple and straightforward technique to realize integrated core-coil geometries. Furthermore, by using a scanning Hall probe microscope (SHPM), a comprehensive, high-spatial resolution characterization of the probe performance (e.g. peak magnetic intensity and spatial field distribution) is achieved for the first time. The manipulation of sub-micron sized magnetic particles with the developed micro electromagnetic probe is also demonstrated.