Fabrication and Analysis of Tapered Tip Silicon Microneedles for MEMS based Drug Delivery System

Abstract

In this paper, a novel design of transdermal drug delivery (TDD) system is presented. The proposed system consists of controlled electronic circuit and microelectromechanical system (MEMS) based devices like microneedles, micropump, flow sensor, and blood pressure sensor. The aim of this project is to develop a system that can eliminate the limitations associated with oral therapy. In this phase tapered tip silicon microneedles have been fabricated using inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching technology. Using ANSYS, simulation of microneedles has been conducted before the fabrication process to test the design suitability for TDD. More over multifield analysis of reservoir integrated with microneedle array using piezoelectric actuator has also been performed. The effects of frequency and voltage on actuator and fluid flow rate through 6×6 microneedle array have been investigated. This work provides envisage data to design suitable devices for TDD.

Keywords

• Tapered tip silicon microneedles
• Coupledmultifield
• Finite element method
• Transdermal drug delivery system