Motion control of bacteria-driven micro objects by Nano/Micro pipettes

Abstract

Nano/Micro robots have been actively studied toward the realization. Now, the micro living organisms, especially flagellated bacteria, have been used as the driving forces for the micro objects. To achieve the more precise control of the position of the bacteria-driven micro objects, the driving force has to be controlled directly by local environmental control. In this paper, we propose the method to control the motion of the bacteria-driven micro objects by local environmental control with nano/micro pipettes. And, we try to control the motion of the bacteria-driven micro objects by controlling the bacterial driving force by attractant with nano/micro pipettes. We demonstrate the motion control of the bacteria-driven 3 μm microbead by generating the local gradient of attractant with 1 μm micropipette containing the attractant.