Development of magnetic materials and processing techniques applicable to integrated micromagnetic devices

Abstract

In this research, electroplated magnetically isotropic and anisotropic soft alloys and screen-printed soft ferrites applicable to micromachined micromagnetic devices are fabricated and characterized using in situ measurement techniques. Appropriate magnetic materials and deposition methods, such as electroplating and screen-printing techniques, are examined and material test structures are fabricated. Following material characterization, micromachined inductors with three-dimensional structure are fabricated to determine the usefulness of the magnetic materials and deposition methods. The micromachined inductor is a key component and geometry for realizing micromagnetic devices such as amplifiers, filters, sensors and actuators. Three different material types are studied in this work. Electroplated magnetically isotropic soft alloys, permalloy (Ni80Fe20), orthonol (Ni50Fe50) and amorphous cobalt-iron-copper (CoFeCu) alloys, are studied, followed by electroplated magnetically anisotropic soft alloys of permalloy (Ni80Fe20) and supermalloy (NiFeMo), which have magnetically easy and hard axes. Finally, screen-printed polymers filled with soft ferrite (NiZn and MnZn) powders are fabricated and characterized.

Modelling of a planar magnetic micropusher for biological cell manipulations

“…The channel volume is filled with a biological medium ( see figure 1). To move our actuator, we chose to use magnetic energy which is a suitable solution for micro-actuation [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Moreover static magnetic field has no effect on living cells unlike laser trapping systems [19].…”

Control of a particular micro-macro positioning system applied to cell micromanipulation

“…Magnetic energy is of great interest in micromanipulation [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20], especially in cell manipulation. Obviously, the magnetic field easily crosses glass slides used in biological manipulations [21].…”

A MEMS-based Double-layer Spiral Planar Inductor using Patterned Permalloy filled with Ferrite/Polyimide Composite Materials as Magnetic Layers

“…But MnZn ferrite usually requires high sintering temperature (1000 to 2000ºC) [5], which is not compatible with micro-fabrication processes. This challenge can be solved by using the composite materials consisting of ferrite powder and viscous polymer to form composite film, which offers a good compromise between the high permeability and high resistivity [6] [7]. Now the plane sandwich structure are greatly applied in fabricating micro-inductor due to its stability and small size and compatibility with processing procedure.…”