Abstract
Recently, bio-technology is a fast-growing research field due to the requirement of medical science and clinical diagnosis. Among all these research subjects, the investigation of the interaction between cells and bacteria are especially important and as a consequence a tool capable of biological object manipulation is influential for these applications. Although there have been various kinds of existing tools proposed for bio-object manipulation, each of them has their own drawbacks. The most unacceptable one could be the invasion of the biological object due to high energy density or direct contact. Thus, we aim at developing a device which could avoid some problems encountered before. In this research, a lobster-sniffing inspired actuator for micro-objects manipulation in liquid environment using electrostatic actuation is proposed. Structure analyses, electromechanical simulation and the simulation model which investigates the interaction between the biomimic actuator and their surrounding fluid are carried out to acquire design criteria. With the dimensional finger design and sequential voltage control, the feasibility and functionality of micro-object manipulation by varying local fluid field is experimentally observed. Since our device manipulates particle via controlling the fluid surrounding the targeted particle, it is a potential tool for the applications of non-contact and non-invasive micro-manipulation in liquid environment.