Educational model for diamagnetic material applications in micro and nano levitation devices

Not very applied in today materials engineering, diamagnetic levitation offers some distinct features for micromagnetics and many other technical domains. It can provide frictionless bearings for micromechanical sensors applied to measure some types of weak forces, resulting from various physical effects, especially in nanotechnologies. Applied in the situation of these micro machines, diamagnetic levitation can naturally eliminate any wear and friction, which are two main factors affecting reliability and control of micro drives. The most important drawback of diamagnetic levitation is a fairly weak force offered per unit mass, which limits its use as a classic sole bearing support in case of systems having relatively low effective accelerations. This paper proves that the static magnetic field sources can bring small diamagnetic bodies in a free levitation. This demonstration and theoretical method involved, is used for material laboratories with students, in order to be more familiarized with this state of the art applications. Furthermore, when considering scale reduction for magnetism, it appears that diamagnetism is more efficient when the dimensions of the system are decreasing, in other words, what is difficult and complex to perform at macroscopic scale may become effortless and simple in the micro-size world This is another issue useful for future material specialists (now students).