Research On Liquid Metal Drive And Control Based On Multiple Energy Field

Room temperature liquid metal gallium and its eutectic alloys have good electrical/thermal conductivity,high surface tension,good fluidity,and both liquid and metal properties,making them ideal materials for building flexible robots.It has shown great potential value in the application bottleneck problem under the condition.In this paper,in-depth research has been carried out on the driving,control and application problems of liquid metal droplets under the action of electric,magnetic and other energy fields.This paper mainly conducts detailed research from four aspects:First,we investigated the planar motion and deformation of magnetically functional liquid metal droplets driven by gradient magnetic fields.A new process of magnetic modification of gallium-based liquid metal is proposed,which uses gallium indium tin liquid metal to successfully mix iron nanoparticles,so that the prepared magnetic function liquid metal droplets can be controlled by the magnetic field.On this basis,the plane motion and deformation force of magnetic liquid metal droplets are analyzed respectively,and we explored the factors affecting the motion of magnetic liquid metal droplets.Secondly,the diverse morphology control and application of liquid metal droplet clusters under magnetic field are studied.We designed a programmable multi-degree-offreedom array magnetic field control platform.The multi-degree-of-freedom array magnetic field control platform is composed of a power module,an electromagnet array,a visual feedback module and a control module.Using this platform,by activating multiple electromagnet units,the platform can realize complex magnetic functional liquid metal morphologies,such as a droplet splitting into four smaller droplets and other excellent cluster control capability.In addition,the great application potential of magnetic functional liquid metal droplets in fields such as cooperative transport is demonstrated.Experiments have shown that the minimum magnetic function liquid metal that can be controlled by a magnetic field is 2.6mm,the maximum instantaneous speed can reach 380mm/s,and it can be programmed to transport objects that exceed twice its own weight.Then,we investigated the diverse morphological control of lightweight liquid metal microdroplets under electric field.A new process has been invented to make lightweight liquid metal microdroplets of variable density that can be controlled by an electric field.The process uses the foam ball as the core,and uses the good wettability of liquid metal and copper to stick the liquid metal on the surface of the foam ball to change the density of the liquid metal.Then,by analyzing the electric double layer theory,the Liman-Pop equation and the Young-Laplace equation,we summarized the electromotive driving mechanism of the light liquid metal microdroplets.The principle of difference in movement patterns is analyzed.On the basis of exploring how the density of light liquid metal microdroplets and the concentration of sodium hydroxide solution affect their motion,the three-dimensional motion and various morphological control of light liquid metal microdroplets are demonstrated,such as two light liquid metal microdroplets.The density of lightweight liquid metal microdroplets as low as 1g/cm3 makes it more free to move in three-dimensional space,which also provides a theoretical basis for liquid metal to work in targeted drug delivery in the human body or in extremely dangerous environments.Finally,based on the electric field driving the liquid metal,a micro liquid metal jet thruster is designed.The miniature liquid metal jet thruster is based on the continuous electrowetting mechanism.By testing the frequency,droplet size,number of columns,etc.,the optimal conditions for the motion of the jet thruster are found,and two configurations of serial and parallel jets are designed.Based on the parallel configuration of the jet propulsion,we invented a miniature surface robot ship.The robot ship consists of three parts:the LME module,the control module and the hull.The robot ship can achieve precise control such as forward,backward,and rotation.The robot ship has a continuous motion performance and stability more than two hours hrough verification.