Miniature instrumented robots for mass-scale synthesis and characterization

Laboratory robots are currently used for material synthesis via combinatorial chemistry and material testing such as for high throughput screening of pharmaceutical compounds. These robots based on a macro-scale approach in a fixed location are relatively slow and capable of only a few movements per second while lacking in precision over the whole working range. In contrast, the authors' NanoWalker technology aims at developing miniature instrumented wireless robots that can make several thousand movements per second and move with a precision that is as much as several orders of magnitude better than what is achievable with current conventional designs. This paper describes the state of development of this technology as well as the future challenges and possible applications.