Recent Advances in Nano‐ and Micromotors

Abstract

Nano‐ and micromotors are fascinating objects that can navigate in complex fluidic environments. Their active motion can be triggered by external power sources or they can exhibit self‐propulsion using fuel extracted from their surroundings. The research field is rapidly evolving and has produced nano/micromotors of different geometrical designs, exploiting a variety of mechanisms of locomotion, being capable of achieving remarkable speeds in diverse environments ranging from simple aqueous solutions to complex media including cell cultures or animal tissue. This review aims to provide an overview of the recent developments with focus on predominantly experimental demonstrations of the various motor designs developed in the past 24 months. First, externally driven motors are discussed followed by considering fuel‐driven approaches. Finally, a short future perspective is provided.

Role of Nanomaterials in the Treatment of Wastewater: A Review

“…As Compared with other traditional wastewater treatment approaches, this subject is still novel and but has a lot of restrictions in extensive and real-world applications. Despite all, current approaches are insufficient to fulfil the current demand in scaling up the technique described in water pollutant treatment, therefore considerable work is still required [115]. Novel materials should link with nano/micro-motors, such as graphene to treat wastewater.…”

Recent Advances in Motion Control of Micro/Nanomotors

“…The latter could be spatially propelled by both homogeneous and heterogeneous magnetic fields, but it require flexible micro/nanomotors capable to adapt to the field vector, which constantly varies with time. [5] Since Dreyfus et al [84] developed the very first magnetically driven micromotor, numerous efforts have been made to effectively control the motion of these magnetic micro/nanomotors, particularly in motion direction and velocity. One notable example is the closed-loop magnetic control system [85] developed by Khalil et al to achieve a precisely point-to-point manipulation of self-propelled microjets, both in 3D space [86] and against the flowing streams of fluids inside a fluidic microchannel with time-varying flow rates.…”

“…In the past decade, micro-and nanoscale devices have stimulated considerable attention [1][2][3] due to their promising applications in sensing, tracking, decontamination, and biomedical areas. [4,5] In particular, micro/nanomotors with desirable dimensions, promising potential of active targeting abilities as well as autonomous or semi-autonomous mobility in a predesigned direction with tuned velocity have paved the way for designing multifunctional drug delivery systems. [6,7] Initially, a wide range of technological developments started from the synthetic micro/nanomotors and various types of such micro/nanomotors have been successfully fabricated, such as microtubes, [8] nanowires, [9] Janus micro/nanomotors, [10,11] and helical micro/nanomotors.…”

Enzyme catalysis powered micro/nanomotors for biomedical applications

“…28 Besides, Soto et al discussed the use of micro/ nanomotors for medical applications and emphasized the current and foreseeable perspectives of their commercialization. 29 Moreover, the importance of biocompatibility of motors for biomedical applications has also been discussed by Peng et al 30 As a promising catalyst candidate, using enzyme to power micro-and nanoswimmers has been discussed by Sanchez et al 31 and Sen et al 15 An overview of most recent advances of micro/nanomotors has been discussed by Städler et al 32 However, of all the reviews, using enzyme motors for biomedical applications has not been discussed. The importance of biofuels and the accessibility of biofuels for in vivo powering motors are also essential for the future perspectives of enzyme powered motors.…”