The Collective Transport of Microparticles Under an Asymmetric Electric Field

In this paper, we describe a collective transport of microparticles emerged in a bottom-up manner. Our transport was spontaneously realized by collision and electrostatic interaction among transported microparticles. Unlike previous technique based on a top-down manner, the microparticles collectively transported even in a condition that there were no biased external force fields. We believe that this work will contribute to the development of the transporting technique with smartness and flexibility in a device of lab-on-a-chip and micro total analysis systems (microTAS).