Sharpening of hollow silicon microneedles to reduce skin penetration force

In this research, hollow silicon microneedles with sharpened tips have been fabricated without any reduction to the needle shaft diameter. By sharpening the needles only at the tip and not over the entire length of the needle, their mechanical strength is maintained, while reducing the insertion force into skin. The process achieves this geometry by novel use photoresist depletion during DRIE. Microneedles of varying levels of tip sharpness were tested on human cadaver skin to measure their force of penetration. The results show a marked decrease of insertion force with progressive sharpening of microneedle tips, reducing more than 75 times in magnitude for extremely sharp tips. The toughness of human skin was derived to be approximately 24.28 kJ m−2.