Light-driven microrobots: capture and transport of bacteria and microparticles in a fluid medium

Abstract

The design of simple microrobotic systems with capabilities to address various applications like cargo transportation, as well as biological sample capturing and manipulation in an individual unit, provides a novel...

pH-Responsive swimming behavior of light-powered rod-shaped micromotors

“…Consequently, the asymmetric chemical activity over the microrods drives the solution out of the chemical equilibrium, and the formed gradient in the surrounding chemical composition results in a self-phoretic motion of the microrods. 17,21 The observed swimming behavior of the fabricated rod-shaped micromotors is discussed in the following section. Since the chemical activity over TiO 2 is driven by light, the micromotors swim only when the light is turned on.…”

“…38 A self-written Python code based on the CSRT tracker provided in the Open-Source Computer Vision Library was used for tracking and measuring the speed of micromotors, and the details are provided somewhere else. 17…”

“…Several micromotor designs that respond to external stimuli such as light, 8 electric fields, 9 magnetic fields, 10 and sound 11 have been reported. When stimulated, these micromotors show interesting dynamics, ranging across tactic responses, 12,13 self-organization, 14,15 guided swimming, 16 manipulation or transportation of microparticles, 17 etc. All these features are interesting for several promising applications.…”

Light-driven micromotors for on-demand and local pH sensing applications

“…In our case, TiO 2 was taken as a photocatalytic material and around 160 nm thickness was deposited over the silica particles. The deposited TiO 2 was then annealed at 450 1C for 30 min for transforming the as-grown amorphous phase into the photo-active crystalline anatase phase 18,19 (see Fig. S1, ESI †).…”

Bubble-propelled micro/nanomotors: a robust platform for the detection of environmental pollutants and biosensing

“…Consequently, the performance and accuracy of sensing are tremendously escalated at the local site. Self-propelled micromotors can drive themselves in a fluid medium by harnessing external energy sources such as light, [19][20][21][22] electric field, [23][24][25] acoustic waves, 26,27 magnetic field, [28][29][30] and the surrounding chemical fuel. [31][32][33][34] Furthermore, to expand their practical utility, they are fabricated and functionalized with different materials, chemicals, and target recognition units to achieve various needs.…”