An integrated open-cavity system for magnetic bead separation and manipulation.

Superparamagnetic beads are generally used in biomedical assays to manipulate, maneuver, separate, and transport bio-materials. We present a low-cost integrated system designed in bulk 0.5 μm process to automate the manipulation and separation process of magnetic beads. The system consists of an 8 × 8 coil-array suitable for a single bead manipulation, or collaborative manipulation using pseudoparallel executions. The size of a single coil is 30 μm × 30 μm and the driver DC current source supports 8 different levels up to 1.5 mA. The total power consumption of the entire system is 9 mW when running at full power and it occupies an area of 248 μm × 248 μm.