Manipulation of Non-Magnetic Materials in Ferrofluid Containing Media

Abstract

AbstractA novel method is proposed whereby non-magnetic objects can be moved along a surface at the microscale and nanoscale. It uses a negative magnetophoretic force, explained in the caption for figure one, on the non-magnetic objects which results from stabilized 10nm diameter iron oxide particles (ferrofluid) being attracted to regions of field maxima around magnetic islands on a surface, which pushes the non-magnetic objects to regions of field minima. By varying an external magnetic field we can control where these minima are and thus control how objects will position themselves with static fields and by using rotating time varying fields we can control how they move across the surface. This method does not require the objects to be initially in contact with the surface, as they will be pulled down to the surface from solution. While this paper deals with beads, any arbitrarily shaped object should be manipuable using this method. Additionally, while we address non-magnetic objects in this work similar methods could easily manipulate objects that are magnetic.