Titanium Bulk Micromachining for BioMEMS Applications: A DEP Device as a Demonstration

Titanium has been widely used as a biomedical material in orthopedics, dentistry, cardiology, and cardiovascular surgery due to the excellent biostability and biocompatibility that results from its spontaneous formation of a highly passivating oxide layer in air and blood. However, little research has been done on the development of titanium for bioMEMS applications. This is likely due to the immaturity of titanium bulk micromachining technology to date. Here we report the application of new high-aspect-ratio bulk titanium micromachining techniques recently developed within our group towards the fabrication of a titanium-based multi-frequency traveling wave dielectrophoresis (DEP) device targeted for the separation of bioparticles. The device serves to illustrate the potential of these techniques for enabling the realization of novel bioMEMS devices with enhanced functionality and capability.