(440a) Designing Light Propelling Nanomotors

It has attracted much interest to design a self-powered artificial nanorobotic system which mimic the behavior of the motile bacteria due to both scientific merits as well as its potential applications. Previously, it has been demonstrated that asymmetric redox reaction on bi-metallic nanowire can produce the electric field and propel itself in solution. This autonomous motion shows that artificial inorganic nanomaterial can be used as nanomotor which harvests energy from the environment.

Here, we will present a novel approach to rational designed micro-swimmer which harvests energy from absorbed photons by photoeletrochemical (PEC) reaction. Upon illumination, the photoelectrochemical reaction on the swimmer surface generates the asymmetric ionic enviroments required to propel the migration of micro-swimmer.

We will present seveal approaches including asymmetric Janus nanostructure and asummetric photonic structure. In this design, we focus on controllability and programmability of the micro-swimmer. The Individual Janus nanotree is designed that it can sense the direction of light vector and direct to illumination direction. Or the nanomotor can be spectrally engineered to response to specific wavelength of light. As the light with different frequencies can be applied to nanomotor, it offers great flexibility and controllablity to nanomotor/nanorobot design.

 Figure a. Schematic of micro-swimmer. b. The trajectory of a pristine nanotree spells “nano” as navigated by light. c. Sequential images of the green algae, E. Gracilis, pristine microswimmer, CSPTMS treated micro-swimmer suspension in aqueous solution with illumination from the right side

Reference:

B. Dai, J. Wang , Z. Xiong, X. Zhan, W. Dai, C.C. Li, S. Feng, J. Tang, Programmable Artificial Phototactic Microswimmer, Nat. Nanotechnol. 11, 1087–1092(2016)