Grant: Idea to Innovation

Polymers are supplanting silicon and glass for use in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), microfluidic lab-on-a-chip (LOC) and micro total analysis systems (µTAS) for reasons of low cost, optical transparency, and biocompatibility. However, difficulties in including active materials for on-chip actuation have limited the commerical success of polymer-based systems. Magnetic actuation employing rare hard earth magnets is capable of high power, large displacement and bi-directional actuation. Over the last decade, there has been much interest among the microsystems industries to fabricate rare earth hard micromagnets for microscale devices. Rare earth micromagnets are attractive for many new and disruptive commercial microdevices in MEMS, RF-MEMS telecommunications, BioMEMS and µTAS. However, the main obstacle to their widespread use has been difficulties with compatibility of permanent magnetic materials with microsystems, especially polymer based systems. At SFU, we have developed magnetic nanocomposite polymers (M-NCPs) based on photopatternable and highly elastic micromoldable polymers. Microstructures molded from our M-NCPs may be combined with undoped polymer layers, resulting in multi-layer microdevices and systems with micropatterned NCP structures on undoped polymer substrates. We have developed novel hard polymer micromagnets capable of generating large bidirectional forces with long working lengths that are superior to soft micromagets in terms of forces generation, working distance, and bi-directionality. The main objectives of the proposal are: 1) to fully characterize the highly flexible permanent M-NCP materials to attract companies who want to incorporate them into their devices; and 2) employ our materials in prototype micromagnets and microactuators to concretely demonstrate their applicability to the MEMS and µTAS industries. The proposed research will enable characterization of these materials toward the goal of commercial production of micromagnets for MEMS/µTAS, and production of a range of microactuators based on microfabricated M-NCPs.