Magnetically Driven Micromachines Created by Two-Photon Microfabrication and Selective Electroless Magnetite Plating for Lab-on-a-Chip Applications

We propose a novel method to fabricate three-dimensional magnetic microparts, which can be integrated in functional microfluidic networks and lab-on-a-chip devices, by the combination of two-photon microfabrication and selective electroless plating. In our experiments, magnetic microparts could be successfully fabricated by optimizing various experimental conditions of electroless plating. In addition, energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS) clarified that iron oxide nanoparticles were deposited onto the polymeric microstructure site-selectively. We also fabricated magnetic microrotors which could smoothly rotate using common laboratory equipment. Since such magnetic microparts can be remotely driven with an external magnetic field, our fabrication process can be applied to functional lab-on-a-chip devices for analytical and biological applications.