Simulation and experiments on magnetic microforces for magnetic microrobots applications

Abstract

Abstract-Magnetic microrobots have a wide variety of applications in micro/nano-manipulation, micro/nano sensing and biomedical fields. Untethered magnetic microrobots are usually driven by a group of electromagnetic coils. To control the magnetic microrobots trajectory, it is of utmost importance to know the magnitude of the magnetic force applied on them. In this paper finite element simulations are proposed to derive the magnetic field produced by an iron core coil. A three dimensional static magnetic analysis is also performed to simulate the magnetic force applied on a magnetic microrobot. The simulation results are validated by experimental measurements. A teslameter is used to measure the magnetic field on the central axis of the coil. A magnetic microrobot (less than 400 x 400 µm 2 ) is fabricated and glued to a force sensor to measure the magnetic force applied on it. The measurement results are in good agreement with the simulation and show the effectiveness of the magnetic simulation.

A Study on Electromagnetic Field and Force for Magnetic Micro-Robots Applications

“…The magnetic force acting on the micro-robot is expressed as a function of magnetization M and magnetic field B and field gradient. However, there is no analytical expression of the magnetic field generated by the coil with an iron core [30]. Calculating the magnetization is difficult for more complex geometries than ellipsoids [33], and the magnetic force cannot be determined directly.…”

“…In this paper, a permanent magnetic micro-cylinder acts as a micro-robot. In order to control the micro-robot precisely, it is crucial to characterize the magnetic field near the micro-robot [28] and understand the magnetic forces exerting on it [22,29,30].…”

Modeling and experiments of high speed magnetic micromanipulation at the air/liquid interface

“…Control of the current in the electromagnet is performed by a custom software that communicates with an electronic amplifier through a National Instrument card (PCI 6733). A rectangular microobject composed of electrodeposited nickel (see [20] for the fabrication process) is placed on an air/water interface (distilled water is used). An image-processing algorithm able to detect the micro-object position in real time has been developed based on thresholding techniques.…”