Niti Nipun Sharma
Manipal University Jaipur, India
Title: Enhanced and self-tuned motive force for locomotion of a nanorobot: possible solution from nature
Biography
Biography: Niti Nipun Sharma
Abstract
Locomotion of bacteria in fluid at small scale is accomplished by cilia and flagella present on its surface. In nature, presence of cilia exhibits various applications such as movement of egg for fertilization in female, mucus and dust removal from lungs and circulation of cerebrospinal fluid in brain. In literature, artificial cilia has been fabricated and used for mixing and movement of fluid in microfluidic applications. In the present study, the branches (cilia) on flagella (paramecium) has been employed as tree branch concept for designing of artificial nanoswimmer and experiments have been performed at scaled up level in silicon oil medium to mimic human body environment. The effects of primary branches have been investigated by fabricating the branched flagella using flexible PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) biocompatible material suitable for human body and biological applications. It has been observed that by increasing number of primary branches from 14 to 28, increase in deflection approximately 23% has been observed. The observed deflection is correlated to the thrust force developed by the propulsion of flagellated nanoswimmer. The thrust force generated due to planar wave actuation of flagella is being picked up by laser micrometer in terms of displacement of cantilever beam. The work also provides a theoretical model that supports the experimental results. The concept of self- tuning also have been studied through statistical analysis probability density function (PDF) which means variations in deflection data can be decreased by increasing number of primary branches.
The current study focus on how branched density affects the output performance in terms of self-tuning and thrust force generation for different model of nanoswimmer. Two designs of nanoswimmer have been investigated experimentally to prove the hypothesis and results are leading towards possible design by improving the efficiency of nanoswimmer. The statistical analysis is performed to endorse the self-tuning and thrust force conception of designed nanoswimmer via probability density function (PDF) and root mean square (RMS) plot of recorded deflection from experimental study. In literature, the effect of viscosity also can be seen to examine the increase in thrust force for nanoswimmer which is also being considered in the present work.