Motion control analysis of two magnetic microrobots using the combination of magnetic gradient and oscillatory magnetic field

Abstract

This paper analyses the motion control of two magnetic microrobots in the microfluidic channel for future drug targeting applications. To transport the drugs, it is necessary to inject and control the motion of multiple therapeutic magnetic microrobots using magnetic gradients. The main difficulty is to control a group of different therapeutic microrobots at desired states, despite the presence of interaction forces between microrobots. To overcome this issue, the solution is to consider two rather spaced microrobots which are controlled along the x-axis using magnetic gradients and an oscillatory magnetic field. This magnetic interaction force is expressed based on a dipoledipole interaction model and dynamic modeling of two magnetic microrobots. The oscillatory magnetic field is used to overcome the surface forces between microrobots and microfluidic walls. Finally, an experimental investigation is carried out in a simple channel under the presence of the magnetic field and magnetic gradient forces in order to analyze the motion control of two magnetic microrobots using the combination of magnetic gradient and oscillatory magnetic fields. Also, we will assess the prevalence of the magnetic interaction forces between two microrobots.