Fabrication of densely arrayed micro-needles with flow channels by mechanical dicing and anisotropic wet etching

摘要

We previously proposed a novel fabrication process, which is a combination of mechanical dicing and anisotropic wet etching, to reduce the cost of MEMS devices, and applied it to fabricate various solid micro-needle arrays in transdermal drug delivery systems [1, 2]. This paper discusses new fabrication processes we developed to produce flow channels in these micro-needle arrays. We fabricated two different types of points for the needle arrays, i.e., pyramidal and pen shaped, by multiplying the number of dicing and wet etching process. The height of the pyramidal needles was 120 mu m and that of the pen pointed was 550 mu m. Both their pitches were 370 mu m. We believe that the processes we developed to produce flow channels in these micro-needle arrays will be useful for producing disposable injection devices for medical applications.