Liquid Metal Universal Micro-Gripper

Magnetic liquid metal (MLM) is a mixture of ferromagnetic powder and liquid metal. It not only displays the unique properties of liquid metal such as high conductivity, good fluidity, high surface tension and nontoxicity compared with mercury, but also can respond to magnetic fields in a rapid speed. It can be controlled accurately by electric and magnetic field, so it has a wide application prospect in solution environment. In this paper, we report a liquid metal universal micro-gripper (LMUMG), which can grasp and release small objects under the integration of magnetic and electric field. Compared with previous studies, this new LMUMG can quickly respond to electric and magnetic field, achieve the clamping of microstructure in a few seconds, and can automatically adapt to the shape of any clamped object to wrap objects, including flat organization, soft and deformable structure. The micro-gripper above is likely to be applied in many fields.