Millimeter-scale flexible robots with programmable three-dimensional magnetization and motions
By Tianqi Xu, Jiachen Zhang, M. Salehizadeh, Onaizah Onaizah, Eric D. Diller. Science Robotics, 2019
604 citations recorded by the source corpus.
New types of flexible microrobots are enabled by patterning discrete 3D magnetization. Flexible magnetic small-scale robots use patterned magnetization to achieve fast transformation into complex three-dimensional (3D) shapes and thereby achieve locomotion capabilities and functions. These capabilities address current challenges for microrobots in drug delivery, object manipulation, and minimally invasive procedures. However, possible microrobot designs are limited by the existing methods for patterning magnetic particles in flexible materials. Here, we report a method for patterning hard magnetic microparticles in an elastomer matrix. This method, based on ultraviolet (UV) lithography, uses controlled reorientation of magnetic particles and selective exposure to UV light to encode magnetic particles in planar materials with arbitrary 3D orientation with a geometrical feature size as small as 100 micrometers. Multiple planar microrobots with various sizes, different geometries, and arbitrary magnetization profiles can be fabricated from a single precursor in one process. Moreover, a 3D magnetization profile allows higher-order and multi-axis bending, large-angle bending, and combined bending and torsion in one sheet of polymer, creating previously unachievable shape changes and microrobotic locomotion mechanisms such as multi-arm power grasping and multi-legged paddle crawling. A physics-based model is also presented as a design tool to predict the shape changes under magnetic actuation.
Subfields: Condensed Matter Physics, Mechanical Engineering
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/557c98bd476d68c7bbebe14466662717abd32334
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In Condensed Matter Physics
In Mechanical Engineering
Citations in the corpus
- The shape – morphing performance of magnetoactive soft materials (2021, methodology): “Another ink-based 3D printing technique that has attracted significant interest for MSMs fabrication is the DLP/DLS (Digital Light Processing/Synthesis) technique [179].”
- Projection micro stereolithography based 3D printing and its applications (2020, methodology): “To fabricate the microrobots where the discrete in planar 3D magnetization can be precisely patterned, Xu et al developed an external magnetic field assisted PμSL 3D printing system to encode 3D magnetization in planar flexible composites at the submillimeter scale [93].”