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      Soft micromachines with programmable motility and morphology

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          Abstract

          Nature provides a wide range of inspiration for building mobile micromachines that can navigate through confined heterogenous environments and perform minimally invasive environmental and biomedical operations. For example, microstructures fabricated in the form of bacterial or eukaryotic flagella can act as artificial microswimmers. Due to limitations in their design and material properties, these simple micromachines lack multifunctionality, effective addressability and manoeuvrability in complex environments. Here we develop an origami-inspired rapid prototyping process for building self-folding, magnetically powered micromachines with complex body plans, reconfigurable shape and controllable motility. Selective reprogramming of the mechanical design and magnetic anisotropy of body parts dynamically modulates the swimming characteristics of the micromachines. We find that tail and body morphologies together determine swimming efficiency and, unlike for rigid swimmers, the choice of magnetic field can subtly change the motility of soft microswimmers.

          Abstract

          In nature many microorganisms are able to change their shape to adapt to the changes in the environment. Inspired by this phenomenon, here Huang et al. build artificial microswimmers with body and flagellum made of programmable hydrogel-based materials incorporated with magnetic nanoparticles.

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          Most cited references27

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          Design, fabrication and control of soft robots.

          Conventionally, engineers have employed rigid materials to fabricate precise, predictable robotic systems, which are easily modelled as rigid members connected at discrete joints. Natural systems, however, often match or exceed the performance of robotic systems with deformable bodies. Cephalopods, for example, achieve amazing feats of manipulation and locomotion without a skeleton; even vertebrates such as humans achieve dynamic gaits by storing elastic energy in their compliant bones and soft tissues. Inspired by nature, engineers have begun to explore the design and control of soft-bodied robots composed of compliant materials. This Review discusses recent developments in the emerging field of soft robotics.
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            Microscopic artificial swimmers.

            Microorganisms such as bacteria and many eukaryotic cells propel themselves with hair-like structures known as flagella, which can exhibit a variety of structures and movement patterns. For example, bacterial flagella are helically shaped and driven at their bases by a reversible rotary engine, which rotates the attached flagellum to give a motion similar to that of a corkscrew. In contrast, eukaryotic cells use flagella that resemble elastic rods and exhibit a beating motion: internally generated stresses give rise to a series of bends that propagate towards the tip. In contrast to this variety of swimming strategies encountered in nature, a controlled swimming motion of artificial micrometre-sized structures has not yet been realized. Here we show that a linear chain of colloidal magnetic particles linked by DNA and attached to a red blood cell can act as a flexible artificial flagellum. The filament aligns with an external uniform magnetic field and is readily actuated by oscillating a transverse field. We find that the actuation induces a beating pattern that propels the structure, and that the external fields can be adjusted to control the velocity and the direction of motion.
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              Controlled propulsion of artificial magnetic nanostructured propellers.

              For biomedical applications, such as targeted drug delivery and microsurgery, it is essential to develop a system of swimmers that can be propelled wirelessly in fluidic environments with good control. Here, we report the construction and operation of chiral colloidal propellers that can be navigated in water with micrometer-level precision using homogeneous magnetic fields. The propellers are made via nanostructured surfaces and can be produced in large numbers. The nanopropellers can carry chemicals, push loads, and act as local probes in rheological measurements.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Nat Commun
                Nat Commun
                Nature Communications
                Nature Publishing Group
                2041-1723
                22 July 2016
                2016
                : 7
                : 12263
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zurich , CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland
                [2 ]Institute of Mechanical Engineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne , CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
                Author notes
                [*]

                These authors contributed equally to this work.

                Article
                ncomms12263
                10.1038/ncomms12263
                5512624
                27447088
                b583a455-297d-4c18-b6b3-6d4f1d52a009
                Copyright © 2016, Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved.

                This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

                History
                : 09 March 2016
                : 17 June 2016
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