Electromagnetically Powered Gene Gun

In this paper, an electromagnetic powered gene gun is developed based on electromagnetic mechanics. In the presented gene gun the capacitor is utilized for storing energy and then discharging to an electromagnetic energy device, and thus providing micro projectiles with electromagnetic force to generate the desired impact force. The results of the discharge impact force of the electromagnetic energy device are discussed in this paper. In order to reduce the size as well as the cost, a two-stage electromagnetic control strategy is developed in this paper, in which a single chip is applied to control the discharge time of dual capacitors in order to increase the impact force. According to the results of the experiment, with the same capacitance, the proposed gene gun can generate higher impact force with smaller size and lower cost, and the feasibility of the proposed electromagnetically powered gene gun is thus verified