CMOS/Microfluidic Hybrid System for RF Sensing of Biological Cells
Donhee Ham and Robert M. Westervelt (Harvard)

Previously we developed a CMOS/microfluidic hybrid system that combines a CMOS integrated circuit (IC) with a microfluidic system fabricated on top. The CMOS chip produces spatially patterned microscopic magnetic fields using an array of microcoils. By dyn-amically reconfiguring the magnetic field pattern, we demonstrated that the CMOS chip can manipulate multiple individual biological cells attached to magnetic beads that are suspended inside the microfluidic system.

Our new study seeks to incorporate a detection capability into the hybrid system, in addition to its already-demonstrated manipulation capability. The microcoils used for manipulation of bead-bound cells readily lend themselves to detection of the bead-bound cells, since a magnetic bead changes the resonance characteristic of the microcoil, which can be detected via RF measurement. A CMOS RF IC is being incorporated into the hybrid system for the on-chip RF measurement for the bead-bound-cell sensing. When the RF sensor is used with the microcoil array, the RF sensor allows imaging of 2-D distribution of bead-bound-cells, where a single microcoil can be thought of as a “pixel”.