Design and Optimize Solid Microneedle using Genetic Algorithm

Abstract

Microneedle is an example of Transdermal drug delivery (TTD) device. It is known for eliminating pain and inconvenient intravenous injections. This study presents a work on design microneedle and optimize the designs using Genetic Algorithm (GA). At first, a few solid microneedles are designed with difference parameters, and the considered parameters involve are shape of the needle, materials, size of array, base of microneedle, height of microneedle and number of needles on the microneedle’s array base. The microneedle is designed to meet the output requirement which are the total deformation and equivalent stress. Pressure on the tip and size of microneedle base are set to be constant which are 3.18 MPa and 2500 µm x 2500 µm x 50 µm, respectively. Then, optimisation process is conducted on the designs using Genetic Algorithm. Based on the optimisation results, it showed that the optimum structure for the studied microneedles is canonical type, diameter and needle height are 500 µm and 500 µm, respectively, PVA material and involve with 3 number of needles. The results showed that GA is capable to achieve the output requirement and able to optimize the parameter of the microneedle structure.