In collaboration with the department of Material Synthesis at IJS and the start-up company Nanos Scientificae we fabricated, optimized and demonstrated the usage of superparamagnetic microgears for use in microfluidic applications. The gears are driven by a rotating magnetic field. At low frequencies they follow the rotation of the field up to a critical frequency (the optimal point of operation lies just below this frequency) at which phase slippage occurs and the angular velocity drops. At higher frequencies the rotation rate increases again. By analyzing the frequency response we showed that the torque on microgears is a consequence of anisotropic susceptibility at low frequencies and relaxation phenomena at high frequencies.
COBISS.SI-ID: 27896103