Assembling particle clusters with incoherent 3D magnetic fields
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 18, 2026

Optimizing Magnetic Force Microscopy Resolution and Sensitivity to Visualize Nanoscale Magnetic Domains
Published on: July 20, 2022
Rasam Soheilian1, Hamed Abdi1, Craig E Maloney1
1Northeastern University, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Boston, MA, USA.
Abstract:
Directed assembly of particle suspensions in massively parallel formats, such as with magnetic fields, has application in rheological control, smart drug delivery, and active colloidal devices from optical materials to microfluidics. At the heart of these applications lies a control optimization problem for driving the assembly and dissolution of highly monodisperse particle clusters. For magnetic field control, most attention to-date has been centered around in-phase coherent magnetic fields. Instead, we investigate a family of incoherent 3D magnetic fields that are capable of creating controlled and tunable particle assemblies such as dimers, trimers, and quadramers. These field functions can be tuned to assemble monodisperse clusters with long term stability and can quickly switch the clusters between different states. This subset of three-dimensional field functions that we have studied demonstrates the rich phase space available to tune colloidal suspensions with magnetic fields.
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