Ultrahigh Speed Cell Manipulation by Robot on a Chip: a Levitated Structure with Three-dimensionally Patterned Surface

This paper presents the ultrahigh speed microrobot actuation for cell manipulations in a microfluidic chip. The Ni and Si composite fabrication was employed to form the optimum riblet shape to reduce fluid friction on the microrobot by anisotropic Si wet etching and deep reactive ion etching. The evaluation experiments show the effectiveness of the riblet surface, especially in the case of high speed actuation. The microrobot is biocompatible since the manipulation arm is composed of Si. We achieved high speed cell spheroids assembly to produce cell sheet in a microfluidic chip by dual-arm microrobot.