Micromachines (Jun 2019)

Grasping and Releasing Agarose micro Beads in Water Drops

  • Federica Vurchio,
  • Pietro Ursi,
  • Alessio Buzzin,
  • Andrea Veroli,
  • Andrea Scorza,
  • Matteo Verotti,
  • Salvatore Andrea Sciuto,
  • Nicola Pio Belfiore

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/mi10070436
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 7
p. 436

Abstract

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The micromanipulation of micro objects is nowadays the focus of several investigations, specially in biomedical applications. Therefore, some manipulation tasks are required to be in aqueous environment and become more challenging because they depend upon observation and actuation methods that are compatible with MEMS Technology based micromanipulators. This paper describes how three grasping-releasing based tasks have been successfully applied to agarose micro beads whose average size is about 60 μ m: (i) the extraction of a single micro bead from a water drop; (ii) the insertion of a single micro bead into the drop; (iii) the grasping of a single micro bead inside the drop. The success of the performed tasks rely on the use of a microgripper previously designed, fabricated, and tested.

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