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Micromachined Linear Brownian Motor: A Nanosystem Exploting Brownian Motion of Nanobeads for Uni-directional Transport

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

Ersin Altintas
Affiliation:
ersin@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp, The University of Tokyo, CIRMM / IIS, 4-6-1 Komaba Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 153-8505, Japan, 0081-3-5452-6249, 0081-3-5452-6250
Edin Sarajlic
Affiliation:
edin@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp, The University of Tokyo, CIRMM / IIS, Tokyo, 153-8505, Japan
Karl F. Bohringer
Affiliation:
karlb@washington.edu, The University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Hiroyuki Fujita
Affiliation:
fujita@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp, The University of Tokyo, CIRMM / IIS, Tokyo, 153-8505, Japan
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Abstract

Nanosystems operating in liquid media may suffer from random thermal fluctuations. Some natural nanosystems, e.g. biomolecular motors, which survive in an environment where the energy required for bio-processes is comparable to thermal energy, exploit these random fluctuations to generate a controllable unidirectional movement. Inspired by the nature, a transportation system of nanobeads achieved by exploiting Brownian motion were proposed and realized. This decreases energy consumption and saves the energy compared to ordinal pure electric or magnetic drive. In this paper we present a linear Brownian motor with a 3-phase electrostatic rectification aimed for unidirectional transport of nanobeads in microfluidic channels. The transport of the beads is performed in 1 μm deep, 2 μm wide PDMS microchannels, which constrain three-dimensional random motion of nanobeads into 1D fluctuation, so-called tamed Brownian motion. We have experimentally traced the rectified motion of nanobeads and observed the shift in the beam distribution as a function of applied voltage. The detailed computational analysis on the importance of switching sequence on the speed performance of motor is performed and compared with the experimental results showing a good agreement.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2008

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