Physical Intelligence Department, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, 70569, Stuttgart, Germany.
Institute for Biomedical Engineering, ETH Zurich, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland.
Sci Rep. 2023 Jun 23;13(1):10196. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-37332-5.
Magnetically actuated Janus surface microrollers are promising microrobotic platform with numerous potential biomedical engineering applications. While the locomotion models based on a "rotating sphere on a nearby wall" can be adapted to surface microrollers, real-world dynamics may differ from the proposed theories/simulations. In this study, we examine the locomotion efficiency of surface microrollers with diameters of 5, 10, 25, and 50 µm and demonstrate that computational fluid dynamics simulations cannot accurately capture locomotion characteristics for different sizes of microrollers. Specifically, we observe a significant mismatch between lift forces predicted by simulations and opposite balancing forces, particularly for smaller microrollers. We propose the existence of an unaccounted force component in the direction of lift, which is not included in the computational fluid dynamics simulations. Overall, our findings provide a deeper understanding of the physical mechanisms underlying surface microroller locomotion and have important implications for future applications in biomedical engineering.
磁驱动的詹纳斯表面微滚轮是一种很有前途的微机器人平台，具有许多潜在的生物医学工程应用。虽然基于“附近壁面上的旋转球体”的运动模型可以适用于表面微滚轮，但实际的动力学可能与提出的理论/模拟有所不同。在这项研究中，我们研究了直径为 5、10、25 和 50 µm 的表面微滚轮的运动效率，并表明计算流体动力学模拟不能准确捕捉不同尺寸微滚轮的运动特性。具体来说，我们观察到模拟预测的升力与相反的平衡力之间存在显著差异，特别是对于较小的微滚轮。我们提出在升力方向存在一个未被计算流体动力学模拟考虑的力分量。总的来说，我们的研究结果提供了对表面微滚轮运动的物理机制的更深入理解，对未来在生物医学工程中的应用具有重要意义。
