Cooperative transport by flocking phototactic micromotors

Zhang, Jianhua; Mou, Fangzhi; Wu, Zhen; Song, Jiupeng; Kauffman, Joshua E.; Sen, Ayusman; Guan, Jianguo

doi:10.1039/d1na00641j

Cited by 29 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 50 publications

(46 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In self-driven systems, local stimuli dominate a particle’s behavior; particles react to their neighbor’s actions to produce collective behaviors 30 – 34 . Externally driven microrobot collectives may be driven by magnetic fields 35 , 36 , light 37 , 38 , acoustics 39 , or any other global stimulus that can alter the motion of one or more particles in the system. Given the high permeability of magnetic fields in many biological and non-biological materials used in biomedical applications, many researchers have focused on developing particle collectives 25 and soft materials 40 , 41 that are responsive to one or more quasistatic 42 or time-varying 43 magnetic fields.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microrobot collectives with reconfigurable morphologies, behaviors, and functions

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mobile microrobots, which can navigate, sense, and interact with their environment, could potentially revolutionize biomedicine and environmental remediation. Many self-organizing microrobotic collectives have been developed to overcome inherent limits in actuation, sensing, and manipulation of individual microrobots; however, reconfigurable collectives with robust transitions between behaviors are rare. Such systems that perform multiple functions are advantageous to operate in complex environments. Here, we present a versatile microrobotic collective system capable of on-demand reconfiguration to adapt to and utilize their environments to perform various functions at the air–water interface. Our system exhibits diverse modes ranging from isotropic to anisotrpic behaviors and transitions between a globally driven and a novel self-propelling behavior. We show the transition between different modes in experiments and simulations, and demonstrate various functions, using the reconfigurability of our system to navigate, explore, and interact with the environment. Such versatile microrobot collectives with globally driven and self-propelled behaviors have great potential in future medical and environmental applications.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microrobot collectives with reconfigurable morphologies, behaviors, and functions

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The speed of the TMS’s movement depends on the size of the particles and the strength of the fluid flow produced by the hot spot. The total migration distance in this experiment was approximately 700 μm, which is longer than that reported previously. ,,,, Longer collective migration (mm to cm scale) should be possible through the same mechanism.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 39%

“…The total migration distance in this experiment was approximately 700 μm, which is longer than that reported previously. 23,27,29,33,59 Longer collective migration (mm to cm scale) should be possible through the same mechanism.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to gathering their own, the TMS can capture various-sized, inert particles (“cargo”) and regulate their dynamic behavior in the solution. The micrographs from the experiments (Figure A, Video S7) show the spontaneous swarming in mixtures of TiO 2 and inert PS spheres (10 μm in diameter) in deionized water and the absence of UV light, leading to the formation of large swarms (200 μm in diameter) encompassing both particle types . In the corresponding simulations (Figure B), 200 small particles and 20 large, inert particles (representing PS) are randomly placed in the simulation box in the absence of light.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Light-Powered, Fuel-Free Oscillation, Migration, and Reversible Manipulation of Multiple Cargo Types by Micromotor Swarms

et al. 2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Through experiments and simulations, we show that fuel-free photoactive TiO 2 microparticles can form mobile, coherent swarms in the presence of UV light, which track the subsequent movement of an irradiated spot in a fluid-filled microchamber. Multiple concurrent propulsion mechanisms (electrolyte diffusioosmotic swarming, photocatalytic expansion, and photothermal migration) control the rich collective behavior of the swarms, which provide a strategy to reversely manipulate cargo. The active swarms can autonomously pick up groups of inert particles, sort them by size, and sequentially release the sorted particles at particular locations in the microchamber. Hence, these swarms overcome three obstacles, limiting the utility of self-propelled particles. Namely, they can (1) undergo directed, long-range migration without the addition of a chemical fuel, (2) perform diverse collective behavior not possible with a single active particle, and (3) repeatedly and controllably isolate and deliver specific components of a multiparticle "cargo". Since light sources are easily fabricated, transported, and controlled, the results can facilitate the development of portable devices, providing broader access to the diagnostic and manufacturing advances enabled by microfluidics.

show abstract

“…To achieve this goal, much effort has been devoted to the design of bioinspired synthetic micro-robots [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. However, several technical difficulties limit this approach, such as questions of power supply, biocompatibility, and efficient steering, especially in complex environments [1,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Rather than reinventing nature's sophisticated machines, an alternative paradigm to address this challenge is to take advantage of them directly: by loading microcargoes onto motile cells, their innate migratory abilities can be exploited to achieve directed transport in a biohybrid approach [1,12,16,[19][20][21].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Biohybrid active matter -- the emergent properties of cell-mediated microtransport

Lepro¹,

Großmann²,

Nagel³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As society paves its way towards device miniaturization and precision medicine, micro-scale actuation and guided transport become increasingly prominent research fields with high impact in both technological and clinical contexts. In order to accomplish directed motion of micron-sized objects towards specific target sites, active biohybrid transport systems, such as motile living cells that act as smart biochemically-powered micro-carriers, have been suggested as an alternative to synthetic micro-robots. Inspired by the motility of leukocytes, we propose the amoeboid crawling of eukaryotic cells as a promising mechanism for transport of micron-sized cargoes and present an in-depth study of this novel type of composite active matter. Its transport properties result from the interactions of an active element (cell) and a passive one (cargo) and reveal an optimal cargo size that enhances the locomotion of the load-carrying cells, even exceeding their motility in the absence of cargo. The experimental findings are rationalized in terms of a biohybrid active matter theory that explains the emergent cell-cargo dynamics and enables us to derive the long-time transport properties of amoeboid micro-carries. As amoeboid locomotion is commonly observed for mammalian cells such as leukocytes, our results lay the foundations for the study of transport performance of other medically relevant cell types and for extending our findings to more advanced transport tasks in complex environments, such as tissues.

show abstract

Cooperative transport by flocking phototactic micromotors

Abstract: Cargo delivery by micro/nanomotors provides enormous opportunities for micromanipulation, environmental cleaning, and drug delivery, etc. However, due to the limited driving force, single micro/nanomotors are usually difficult to transport cargoes...

Cited by 29 publications

References 50 publications

Microrobot collectives with reconfigurable morphologies, behaviors, and functions

Microrobot collectives with reconfigurable morphologies, behaviors, and functions

Light-Powered, Fuel-Free Oscillation, Migration, and Reversible Manipulation of Multiple Cargo Types by Micromotor Swarms

Biohybrid active matter -- the emergent properties of cell-mediated microtransport

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About