Controlled Magnetic Propulsion of Floating Polymeric Two-Dimensional Nano-Objects (original) (raw)

Soft-bodied magnetically actuated microrobots could be developed by including controlled dispersions of magnetic nanoparticles into polymeric micro-fabricated structures. The characterization and actuation of magnetically active soft-bodied microrobots by tailored magnetic fields is, thus, a key issue for the design, full control and further development of these mobile micro-systems. In this work, the authors demonstrate the predictable and controllable transportation of polymeric flexible nanofilms embedding super-paramagnetic nanoparticles, by developing and quantitatively validating a model of the magnetic force acting on such structures, thus paving the way towards the wireless magnetic actuation of soft-bodied microrobots. The magnetic forces generated in our experimental conditions range from about 10 –9 to 10–6 N, with typical velocities for the nanofilms ranging between about 0.1 and 2.3 mm/s. For the entire range, a good agreement between theoretical model predictions and measured data is obtained (average normalized error δ =3. 65%). The proposed approach for microrobotic development targets challenging environments, where keywords are liquid or wet micro-structured environments, like in biomedical applications.