The Institute of Chemistry has developed a "drop robot" with programmable control

[ Instrument R & D of Instrument Network ] Precise control of droplet behavior is the key to cooling and cooling, anti-icing, and microfluidics. Current research mainly focuses on the movement behavior of a single droplet. At this time, it is only necessary to make the driving force of the droplet larger than the fixed resistance to the movement of the droplet. Adjusting the relative size of the driving force and resistance of the droplets to achieve complex droplet behavior still faces severe challenges.

The so-called nano image printing technology is, in the final analysis, a new type of imprinting transfer technology, which will be widely used in the processing of nano concave and convex graphics. Nano image printing technology is to use a mold with nano concave and convex images as a "printing plate", using silicon wafers or glass sheets coated with a polymer coating in advance as a substrate (printed object), with the cooperation of corresponding equipment and appliances, After precise imprinting and shaping, the mold is separated from the substrate. At this time, people will find that the nano-relief image present on the surface of the mold is transferred to the polymer film on the surface of the substrate without any errors. The transferred image has the same size as the concave and convex pattern on the surface of the mold, and the depth is the same. But the shape is just the opposite (yin to yang image), that is, the protrusion of the former is exactly where the latter is recessed, and vice versa. We use this principle of printing stamp to transfer out the technology with nano concave and convex patterns, called nano image printing technology.

With the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Song Yanlin's research group of the Key Laboratory of Green Printing, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences has been devoted to the research and application of nano-green printing technology in recent years. A series of progress has been made in the field of interface manipulation of droplet behavior.

The combination of droplets and flexible electrical devices is a brand-new idea and method for building a fully flexible software robot. This method lays the foundation for fully implementing a software robot that can work independently in a complex environment. This method brings convenience to time and labor consumption research. The characteristics of high-throughput programmable control make it applicable to fields such as gene sequencing, chemical synthesis, drug delivery, and micro-assembly that require precise manipulation and continuous testing. It is expected to become a "vascular doctor" that can enter human detection and treatment, which is very important. Scientific meaning and application value

Recently, they have designed a "drop robot" that can be programmed to control, and for the first time realized the complex behavior of droplet cutting, moving, releasing and rotating. The robot consists of a magnetic field control system and two stainless steels. By controlling the distribution of the magnetic field programmatically, the position of the steel ball and the distance between the centers of the balls can be changed, so as to dynamically adjust the resistance of the front and rear ends during the movement of the droplet, and realize the multi-behavior control of the droplet. Surface treatment of the steel ball to adjust its surface energy can be used to control a variety of fluid systems. For example, controlling oil droplets under water, controlling water droplets under oil, and controlling bubbles underwater. This droplet control technology has a wide range of potential applications in the fields of chemical analysis and biomedicine.

Source: Encyclopedia, Institute of Chemistry