Design, Fabrication and Thermal Characterization of a MEMS Device for Control of Nerve Cell Growth

There has been significant work on use of MEMS for biomedical applications in the past few years. This work presents a microheater device for use in experiments to study the effect of temperature on nerve cell growth. The device consists of a thin membrane with embedded heater and temperature sensors. Nerve cells could be immobilized on the membrane surface and their growth behavior could be studied by applying different heating powers, the goal being the actuation and control of cell growth using temperature. This work presents the design and fabrication of the microheater device being used in these cell growth experiments. Experimental data and finite element modeling are used to characterize the thermal response of the device. This yields a low value of the membrane thermal conductivity which indicates the amorphous nature of the thin film.