Microfabricated silicon array of microneedles: prediction of its behaviour during insertion through the skin

Transdermal drug delivery is a novel alternative painless way to inject medicine and therapic agents through skin. Our study investigates an array of out-of-plane microneedles to pierce the permeability barrier without reaching the nerves in the deeper layers. To the best of our knowledge, the skin behavior during the insertion of a microneedle array through its different layers has not up to now been fully dealt with. In this paper, we assume skin to be similar to a stratified material, and approximate it as composed of three layers: the stratum corneum is described by a linear isotropic material model while a hyperelastic material model (Ogden) is used for the two deeper layers. The choice of the model is all the more important since we work at a microscopic scale. We prove that differences exist between the insertion of one microneedle and the insertion of an array of microneedles in terms of the skin deformation and value of the insertion force due to the interaction among microneedles. We simulate the insertion of a micro needles array using a finite element method and the results show a relation between the microneedle diameter, the array density and the microneedle length. Our arrays of microneedles are fabricated by deep reacting ion etching (DRIE) and coated by titanium out of biocompatibility concerns. In this paper, the dimensions of the microneedles are: 500 microns in length, 30-60 microns in inner channel diameter and 100-150 microns in outer diameter in order to be in agreement with our analytically analysis. Some experimental validations are given.