Motion planning and manipulation of multiple nanowires simultaneouly under electric-fields in fluid suspension

The automated steering and manipulation of multiple nanowires independently would enable the potentially scalable assembly of nanodevices for a variety of applications. We present an electric-field-based design for simultaneous motion planning and manipulation of multiple nanowires in liquid suspension. The design is built on a micro-fluidic device that is actuated by a simple, generic set of electrodes. We first present a motion-control algorithm to simultaneously steer multiple nanowires along desired trajectories under controlled electrophoretic forces, while compensating for background electro-osmotic flow. A two-stage motion-planning algorithm is then presented to generate the desired trajectory for each individual nanowire. Numerical simulations and experimental results confirm and demonstrate the performance of the proposed motion planning and control design.