Magnetic bead manipulation in a sub-microliter fluid volume applicable for biosensing

Magnetic actuation principles using superparamagnetic beads suspended in a fluid are studied in this paper. An exptl. setup contg. a submicroliter fluid vol. surrounded by four miniaturized electromagnets was designed and fabricated. On the basis of optical velocity measurements, the induced behavior of single beads and ordered chains was analyzed and compared to a theor. model. This research can be used to develop new techniques for accelerated transportation in lab-on-a-chip bio-assays. [on SciFinder (R)