The transport characteristics of a shear-thinning fluid driven by metachronal magnetic artificial cilia

Precise and localized fluid control at small scales is essential for advancing lab-on-a-chip and organ-on-a-chip technologies in fields like biomedicine, drug discovery, and chemical analysis. Traditional pumps are often inadequate for efficient small-volume transport in microfluidic environments, making artificial cilia an appealing solution for integrated, localized fluid management. While magnetically driven cilia offer a biocompatible, non-invasive approach, existing research has primarily focused on Newtonian fluids, leaving the behaviour of shear-thinning fluids largely unexplored. This study investigates the transport characteristics of shear-thinning fluids using a magnetic cilia array under a rotating magnetic field, generating metachronal motion that modulates local viscosity. Results show that the dynamic coupling between cilia beating and the shear‑thinning fluid produces transport behaviour different from that in a Newtonian fluid, particularly at high driving frequencies, offering insights that can inform future design and optimization of magnetic cilia systems for precise fluid control in microfluidic applications, as well as highlighting the importance in studying cilia driven flow in non-Newtonian fluids.