Design, modeling, and control of a horizontal magnetic micromanipulator

Magnetic micromanipulators with a wide range of force generating capabilities are able to manipulate micron size particles for various applications and measurements. These magnetic particles can be coated with receptors to specifically bind to target biomolecules. In this work, a horizontal magnetic micromanipulator is designed, modeled and controlled for single micron size magnetic particle manipulations. A method is presented for dynamic modeling of magnetic micromanipulators. A feedback control method is designed that allows direct linearization of the system. It is shown that the proposed controller guarantees the stability of the closed-loop system, and yields zero steady-state error in a wide range of operation conditions. We show that the micromanipulator is able to generate a wide range of piconewton (pN) scale forces on a superparamagnetic particle for single molecule separation, and biosensor developments.