Bioapplications of integrated MEMS catheter tracking system for MRI and split ring resonator based glucose sensor

This thesis mainly consists of design, implementation and characterization of two different types of resonators for bioapplications. The first part of the thesis is about the fabrication and characterization of two generations of nickel electroplated microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices which will be used for catheter tracking in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI is an imaging technique which is widely used in medicine thanks to its high contrast and its being safe for human health. There are several techniques to track a catheter tip inside the MRI, most of them utilizing electrical interconnects for data readout and power transmission which in turn causes heating of the catheter tip. The heating problem can be overcome by devising an innovative system which uses optical power transmission and optical data readout. In this system, MEMS devices integrated to a complementary metal oxide semiconductor integrated circuit (CMOS IC) enable optical data readout via laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV). Both generations of MEMS resonators are fabricated by nickel electroplating which provides low stress devices. The second part of this thesis focuses on a bioapplication of split ring resonators (SRR) which are comparatively new to the biosensor field. The SRRs matched to 2 GHz resonant frequency will be modeled, fabricated, characterized and then they are used in glucose sensing. The reaction of glucose with glucose oxidase (GOx) enzyme changes the electromagnetic characteristics of the solution sample. Exploiting this property, the effect of reaction time, concentration, position, and volume of the sample on the resonance characteristics of the SRR was studied.