The quest for biocompatible microswimmers powered by compatible fuel and with full motion control over their self-propulsion is a long-standing challenge in the field of active matter and microrobotics. Here, we present an active hybrid microcapsule motor based on Janus hollow mesoporous silica microparticles powered by the biocatalytic decomposition of urea at physiological concentrations. The directional self-propelled motion lasts longer than 10 min with an average velocity of up to 5 body lengths per second. Additionally, we control the velocity of the micromotor by chemically inhibiting and reactivating the enzymatic activity of urease. The incorporation of magnetic material within the Janus structure provides remote magnetic control on the movement direction. Furthermore, the mesoporous/hollow structure can load both small molecules and larger particles up to hundreds of nanometers, making the hybrid micromotor an active and controllable drug delivery microsystem.

The research field of man-made nano/micromotors is growing significantly at the level of new materials and fabrication, as well as numerous exciting demonstrations, ranging from Visible light-driven nano/micromotors are promising candidates for biomedical and environmental applications. This study demonstrates blue light-driven Ag/AgCl-based spherical Janus micromotors, which couple plasmonic light absorption with the photochemical decomposition of AgCl. These micromotors reveal high motility in pure water, i.e., mean squared displacements (MSD) reaching 800 µm 2 within 8 s, which is 100× higher compared to previous visible light-driven Janus micromotors and 7× higher than reported ultraviolet (UV) light-driven AgCl micromotors. In addition to providing design rules to realize efficient Janus micromotors, the complex dynamics revealed by individual and assemblies of Janus motors is investigated experimentally and in simulations. The effect of suppressed rotational diffusion is focused on, compared to UV light-driven AgCl micromotors, as a reason for this remarkable increase of the MSD. Moreover, this study demonstrates the potential of using visible light-driven plasmonic Ag/AgCl-based Janus micromotors in human saliva, phosphate-buffered saline solution, the most common isotonic buffer that mimics the environment of human body fluids, and Rhodamine B solution, which is a typical polluted dye for demonstrations of photocatalytic environmental remediation. This new knowledge is useful for designing visible light driven nano/micromotors based on the surface plasmon resonance effect and their applications in assays relevant for biomedical and ecological sciences. Janus Micromotors

The motion of nanomotors triggered by light sources will provide new alternative routes to power nanoarchitectures without the need of chemical fuels. However, most light-driven nanomotors are triggered by UV-light, near infrared reflection (NIR) or laser sources. We demonstrate that nanocap shaped Au/TiO2 nanomotors (175 nm in diameter) display increased Brownian motion in the presence of broad spectrum visible light. The motion results from the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect leading to self-electrophoresis between the Au and TiO2 layers, a mechanism called plasmonic photocatalytic effect in the field of photocatalysis. This mechanism has been experimentally characterized by electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), energy-filtered transmission electron microscopy (EFTEM) and optical video tracking. We also studied this mechanism in a more theoretical manner using numerical finite-difference timedomain (FDTD) simulations. The ability to power nanomaterials with visible light may result in entirely new applications for externally powered micro/nanomotors.

Insight is provided into the collective behavior of visible‐light photochemically driven plasmonic Ag/AgCl Janus particles surrounded by passive polystyrene (PS) beads. The active diffusion of single Janus particles and their clusters (small: consisting of two or three Janus particles and large: consisting of more than ten Janus particles), and their interaction with passive PS beads, are analyzed experimentally and in simulations. The diffusivity of active Janus particles, and thus the exclusive effect to passive PS beads, can be regulated by the number of single Janus particles in the cluster. On the simulation side, the Langevin equations of motion for self‐propelled Janus particles and diffusing passive PS beads are numerically solved using Molecular‐Dynamics simulations. The complex interactions of both subsystems, including elastic core‐to‐core interactions, short‐range attraction, and effective repulsion due to light‐induced chemical reactions are considered. This complex mixed system not only provides insight to the interactive effect between active visible light‐driven self‐propelled micromotors and passive beads, but also offers promise for implications in light‐controlled propulsion transport and chemical sensing.

Crystals melt when thermal excitations or the concentration of defects in the lattice is sufficiently high. Upon melting, the crystalline long-range order vanishes, turning the solid to a fluid. In contrast to this classical scenario of solid melting, here a counter-intuitive behavior of the occurrence of crystalline long-range order in an initially disordered matrix is demonstrated. This unusual solidification is demonstrated in a system of passive colloidal particles accommodating chemically active defects-photocatalytic Janus particles. The observed crystallization occurs when the amount of active-defectinduced fluctuations (which is the measure of the effective temperature) reaches critical value. The driving mechanism behind this unusual behavior is purely internal and resembles a blast-induced solidification. Here, the role of "internal micro-blasts" is played by the photochemical activity of defects residing in the colloidal matrix. The defect-induced solidification occurs under non-equilibrium conditions: the resulting solid exists as long as a constant supply of energy in the form of ion flow is provided by the catalytic photochemical reaction at the surface of active Janus particle defects. The findings could be useful for the understanding of the phase transitions of matter under extreme conditions far from thermodynamic equilibrium.