Manipulation of magnetic particles by patterned arrays of magnetic spin-valve traps

A novel platform for microfluidic manipulation of magnetic particles is discussed. The particles are confined by an array of magnetic spin valves with bistable ferromagnetic “ON” and antiferromagnetic “OFF” net magnetization states. The switchable fringing fields near the spin-valve traps can be used to selectively confine or release particles for transport or sorting. Spin-valve traps may be potentially used as magnetic molecular tweezers or adapted to a low-power magnetic random access memory (MRAM) switching architecture for massively parallel particle sorting applications.