Fig. 5: Micromachine 2: the micro-gear train.
From: Reconfigurable multi-component micromachines driven by optoelectronic tweezers
Frames from Supplementary Movie 12 illustrating micro-gear-trains driven by one active micro-gear comprising a two and b four micro-gears. c Plot of maximum angular velocity as a function of the number of components in a micro-gear-trains with one active micro-gear driven by a 20 Vpp OET bias voltage at 10 kHz. Error bars represent ±1 SD from five measurements for each type of micro-gear-train (assembled from different components). Frames from Supplementary Movie 13 illustrating micro-gear-trains driven by d two active micro-gears (three total) and e four active micro-gears (seven total). f–h Frames from Supplementary Movie 14 illustrating micro-gear-trains formed from small (150 μm diameter) and large micro-gears (300 μm diameter). In (f, g), the small micro-gear drives the system; in (h), the large micro-gear drives the system. In all images, red and yellow dashed lines with arrowheads represent the rotation directions of the active and passive micro-gears, respectively.
