2D open loop trajectory control of a micro-object in a dielectrophoresis-based device

In the last years, industries have shown a global trend to miniaturize the size of the components to micron in order to reduce the dimension of the final product. At this scale, a micro-object behaves differently from the micro-scale and its behavior is affected by additional physical phenomenon such as the dielectrophoresis. Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is used to separate, manipulate and detect micro particles in several domains with high speed and precision, such as in biological cell or Carbon Nano-Tubes (CNTs) manipulations. This paper focuses on developing a 2D direct dynamic model of the micro-object behavior on the base of a 3D dielectrophoretic simulator. This 2D dynamic model is used to establish an open loop control law by a numerical inversion. Exploiting this control law, a high speed trajectory tracking and high precision positioning can be achieved. Several simulated and experimental results are shown to evaluate this control strategy and discuss its performance.