Study of cylinder/plan capillary force near millimeter scale and experimental validation

Abstract

The theoretical study presented in this paper aims at proposing two capillary forces models related to manipulation of cylindrical and prismatic components. The underlying application framework is related to the objectives of the European NanoRAC project, which are the manipulation and characterization of nanocomponents such as nanotubes or nanowires. The analytical equivalence of Laplace and energetical method in the case of prism/plane interaction has been demonstrated, and then applied numerically to the cylinder/plane interaction. First experiments at millimeter scale on cylinders are introduced.