Design and Simulation of a Helical Microrobot for Maximum Speed Enhancement by Physical Surface Modification

Magnetic helical microrobots have great potential in biomedical applications. However, improving their motion performance in the complex and variable in vivo fluid environment remains challenging. Previous researches mainly focus on optimizing the geometric parameter, the evolutionary structure design, and chemical modifications of the robots, with limited attention given to the impact of physical surface modifications on propulsion performance. To address this issue, we design the helical microrobot with different surface physical modifications, including dimpled and raised surfaces, to evaluate their effects on swimming performance. With ANSYS Fluent, we simulated their swimming process in water and found that microrobots with physically modified surfaces experience less resistance and exhibit a larger step-out frequency while swimming. Moreover, our findings suggest that helical microrobots with dimpled surfaces demonstrate superior swimming performance due to their larger gas-liquid interface area compared to those with raised surfaces.