Christof Hagleitner

Biography

Microfabrication processes for chemical and biochemical sensors hold the potential to produce one or thousands of devices of micrometer and millimeter dimensions. This ability to fabricate many of these devices in parallel leads to tremendous cost savings and enables the production of array structures or large device series with minute fabrication tolerances. The paper "Microfabrication Techniques for Chemical/Biosensors" published in the June 2003 issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE by Henry Baltes, Oliver Brand, Christoph Hagleitner and Andreas Hierlemann will be a valued reference to those involved in microfabrication for the foreseeable future. Originally asked to describe how microfabrication technology applies to chemical microsensors, the authors exceeded all expectations by crafting a powerful review that describes, compares and contrasts the principal approaches to microsensor technology, identifies them with their appropriate microfabrication technologies, and provides wide-ranging examples of each from numerous research groups. The paper provides a sound outline of fundamental chemical sensor principles,a definitive review of the advantages and disadvantages of fabricating devices via IC fabrication technology, a description of various microfabrication process flows, and a look at monolithic, integrated chemical and biological microsensor systems.

Dr. Christoph Hagleitner received his doctoral degree in electrical engineering at the age of 29 from ETH Zurich with a thesis on a CMOS single-chip gas detection system. He then headed the circuit-design group of the Physical Electronics Laboratory. During his doctoral work, he specialized in interface circuitry and system aspects of CMOS integrated micro- and nanosystems. His work focused on CMOS integrated probes for parallel imaging by atomic force microscopy and chemical sensors. Currently, he is a research staff member at the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich working on the analog front-end design of a novel probe-storage device. Dr. Hagleitner is the author of more than 40 papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings.