Arrays of solvent cast hollow out-of-plane polymer microneedles for drug delivery

Author

Mansoor, I. ; Häfeli, U.O. ; Stoeber, B.

Author_Institution

Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

fYear

2011

fDate

23-27 Jan. 2011

Firstpage

1027

Lastpage

1030

Abstract

Microneedles are tiny hollow structures that allow painless drug delivery into human skin. In this work, we present a novel fabrication method for microstructures based on solvent casting that allows rapid fabrication of inexpensive microneedles from polymer materials. The polymer microneedles are formed on a reusable mold made with a single photolithography step. The strength of the fabricated microneedles under compressive loading was investigated. The capability of the microneedles for drug delivery was also demonstrated by injection of fluorescent beads into rabbit ear skin and inspection of the penetration depth using confocal microscopy.

Keywords

bioMEMS; biomedical equipment; casting; drug delivery systems; microfabrication; optical microscopy; photolithography; polymers; skin; compressive loading; confocal microscopy; drug delivery; fabrication method; fluorescent bead injection; human skin; microstructures; out-of-plane polymer microneedles; penetration depth; photolithography; rabbit ear skin; reusable mold; solvent casting; tiny hollow structures; Casting; Fabrication; Fluorescence; Needles; Polymers; Skin; Solvents;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS), 2011 IEEE 24th International Conference on

Conference_Location

Cancun

ISSN

1084-6999

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-9632-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MEMSYS.2011.5734603

Filename

5734603