Modeling of electrostatic forces induced by chemical surface functionalisation for microrobotics applications.

Amélie Cot (1) , Jérôme Dejeu (2) , Sophie Lakard (3) , Patrick Rougeot (1) , Michaël Gauthier (1)

1 FEMTO-ST - Franche-Comté Électronique Mécanique, Thermique et Optique - Sciences et Technologies (UMR 6174)
2 DCM - Département de Chimie Moléculaire
3 UTINAM - Univers, Transport, Interfaces, Nanostructures, Atmosphère et environnement, Molécules (UMR 6213)

Non-contact microrobotics is a promising way to avoid adhesion caused by the well-known scale effects. Nowadays, several non-contact micro-robots exist. Most of them are controlled by magnetic or dielectrophoresis phenomena. To complete this, we propose a method based on electrostatic force induced by chemical functionalisation of substrates. In this study, we show a model of this force supported by experimental results. We reached long range forces measuring an interaction force of several microNewtons and an interaction distance of tens micrometers. This paper shows the relevance of using chemical electrostatic forces for microrobotics applications.

Domaines: Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Amélie Cot, Jérôme Dejeu, Sophie Lakard, Patrick Rougeot, Michaël Gauthier. Modeling of electrostatic forces induced by chemical surface functionalisation for microrobotics applications.. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS'13., Jan 2013, Japan. pp.2065-2070. ⟨hal-00903634⟩