Antoine Barbot

Since 2020, I am CNRS researcher at FEMTO-ST institute.

My research focus on the use of surface tension force as in microsystems in order to bring compactness to microrobots. This force exists at the interface between two fluids and is responsible for capillary effects such as water striders walking on water's surface. Although it is often negligible at our scale, this force becomes increasingly dominant as size scales down, with a linear dependence on scale (not cubic like inertia or squared like friction). While well-known in physics and chemistry communities, surface tension force remain underutilized in micro-mechanisms.

To achieve this, I first study liquid joints, which consist of a droplet of liquid connecting two solids in a gas (or vice versa) to form mechanic joint at small scales within a very confined space. I investigate how these liquid joints can be actuated to induce motion and also their use as sensors for retrieving the position of a microrobot. I seek to understand how surface tension can enable the development of hydraulic micro-actuators with multiple degrees of freedom. Ultimately, I explore how the nonlinearity introduced by surface tension at small-scale fluid flow can enable amplification and logical operations to compactly integrate intelligence onto microrobots.

My method relies on creating small-scale demonstrators to achieve three main objectives: first, to experimentally validate modeling; second, to acquire necessary microfabrication know-how; and finally, to rapidly test the applicative potential of the microrobot concept.

Link to google scholar profil and youtube channel.

 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3905-1142