CMOS magnetic actuators for bio-material manipulation

Abstract

Magnetic manipulation for molecular-level interrogation and diagnosis are emerging as lab-on-chip platforms. These platforms necessitate low-cost, low-power, portable, and high efficiency integrated implementations. We Implement an all-integrated programmable 16×16 magnetic coil array chip with a die-size of 1.5×1.5mm2 designed in bulk CMOS 0.5μm 3M2P technology. The integrated design does not require any external magnetic source. It relies on the Hall effect generated by the smallest permissible vertical coil inductors (in this reported technology, the inductor's planar area is 6μm×6μm). The coil array is selectively and dynamically controlled. Each cell, composed of the coil and its logical control circuitry, can emit eight programmable magnetic field levels. All array components are tuned to work at 900MHz and incorporate highspeed serial row/column switching. The array can be used to manipulate a small, in the order of 6μm×6μm, single molecule or in collaborative manipulation of larger bio-material objects.