Developing Magnetic Tweezers for Magnetic Material Manipulation

Single-molecule research has stimulated the development of a wide range of technologies that are capable of manipulating very small structures and materials. Among current available methods, the magnetic tweezers show high efficiency and cost effectiveness in generating strong and direction adjustable interactions with magnetic materials. Since our research group has extensive experience in synthesizing magnetic nanostructures, it is of great interest to develop magnetic force-based nanomaterials manipulation techniques. In this thesis, we describe the design and construct of tip based electromagnetic tweezers. We focused on the investigation and quantification of interactions between a soft magnetic tip and a superparamagnetic bead suspended in liquid. We studied the effects of tip taper length and current in the solenoid surrounding the tip on resulted forces. An axisymmetric 2D model using COMSOL Multiphysics has also been developed to analyze the magnetic field and force acting on the superparamagnetic beads based on experimental design.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Materials Engineering

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Liu, Yun

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sun, Li

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Ardebili, Haleh
• Mavrokefalos, Anastassios

• Magnetic tweezers
• Permalloy
• Superparamagnetic bead
• COMSOL Multiphysics

Statement dc:rights

• The author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10657/1082

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/1082