- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine
Access Provided by Xinjiang University

Physical Review Fluids

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Rapid Communication
  • Open Access
  • Access by Xinjiang University

Microtransformers: Controlled microscale navigation with flexible robots

Thomas D. Montenegro-Johnson

  • School of Mathematics, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom

PDF

Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 062201(R) – Published 18 June, 2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.3.062201

Abstract

Artificial microswimmers are a new technology with promising microfluidics and biomedical applications, such as directed cargo transport, microscale assembly, and targeted drug delivery. A fundamental barrier to realizing this potential is the ability to independently control the trajectories of multiple individuals within a large group. A promising navigation mechanism for “fuel-based” microswimmers – for example, autophoretic Janus particles – entails modulating the local environment to guide the swimmer, for instance by etching grooves in microchannels. However, such techniques are currently limited to bulk guidance. This Rapid Communication will argue that by manufacturing microswimmers from phoretic filaments of flexible shape-memory polymer, elastic transformations can modulate swimming behavior, allowing precision navigation of selected individuals within a group through complex environments.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (39)

  1. A. Walther and Axel H. E. Müller, Janus particles, Soft Matter 4, 663 (2008).
  2. E. Lauga and Thomas R. Powers, The hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms, Rep. Prog. Phys. 72, 096601 (2009).
  3. J. Katuri, K. D. Seo, D. S. Kim, and S. Sánchez, Artificial micro-swimmers in simulated natural environments, Lab on a Chip 16, 1101 (2016).
  4. B. J. Nelson, I. K. Kaliakatsos, and J. J. Abbott, Microrobots for minimally invasive medicine, Annu. Rev. Biomed. Eng. 12, 55 (2010).
  5. C. Maggi, J. Simmchen, F. Saglimbeni, J. Katuri, M. Dipalo, F. De Angelis, S. Sanchez, and R. Di Leonardo, Self-assembly of micromachining systems powered by janus micromotors, Small 12, 446 (2016).
  6. R. Dreyfus, J. Baudry, M. L. Roper, M. Fermigier, H. A. Stone, and J. Bibette, Microscopic artificial swimmers, Nature (London) 437, 862 (2005).
  7. L. Zhang, J. J. Abbott, L. Dong, K. E. Peyer, B. E. Kratochvil, H. Zhang, C. Bergeles, and B. J. Nelson, Characterizing the swimming properties of artificial bacterial flagella, Nano Lett. 9, 3663 (2009).
  8. L. Zhang, J. J. Abbott, L. Dong, B. E. Kratochvil, D. Bell, and B. J. Nelson, Artificial bacterial flagella: Fabrication and magnetic control, Appl. Phys. Lett. 94, 064107 (2009).
  9. P. Tierno, Ramin Golestanian, Ignacio Pagonabarraga, and Francesc Sagués, Controlled Swimming in Confined Fluids of Magnetically Actuated Colloidal Rotors, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 218304 (2008).
  10. D. J. Smith, J. R. Blake, and E. A. Gaffney, Fluid mechanics of nodal flow due to embryonic primary cilia, J. R. Soc., Interface 5, 567 (2008).
  11. N. Bertin, T. A. Spelman, O. Stephan, L. Gredy, M. Bouriau, E. Lauga, and P. Marmottant, Propulsion of bubble-based acoustic microswimmers, Phys. Rev. Appl. 4, 064012 (2015).
  12. B. J. Williams, S. V. Anand, J. Rajagopalan, and M. T. A. Saif, A self-propelled biohybrid swimmer at low Reynolds number, Nat. Commun. 5, 3081 (2014).
  13. P. Katsamba and E. Lauga, Micro-tug-of-war: A selective control mechanism for magnetic swimmers, Phys. Rev. Appl. 5, 064019 (2016).
  14. H.-R. Jiang, N. Yoshinaga, and M. Sano, Active Motion of a Janus Particle by Self-Thermophoresis in a Defocused Laser Beam, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 268302 (2010).
  15. T. Bickel, A. Majee, and A. Würger, Flow pattern in the vicinity of self-propelling hot Janus particles, Phys. Rev. E 88, 012301 (2013).
  16. A. Nourhani, V. H. Crespi, P. E. Lammert, and A. Borhan, Self-electrophoresis of spheroidal electrocatalytic swimmers, Phys. Fluids 27, 092002 (2015).
  17. R. Golestanian, T. B. Liverpool, and A. Ajdari, Propulsion of a Molecular Machine by Asymmetric Distribution of Reaction Products, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 220801 (2005).
  18. W. F. Paxton, K. C. Kistler, C. C. Olmeda, A. Sen, S. K. St. Angelo, Y. Cao, T. E. Mallouk, P. E. Lammert, and V. H. Crespi, Catalytic nanomotors: Autonomous movement of striped nanorods, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 126, 13424 (2004).
  19. J. R. Howse, R. A. L. Jones, A. J. Ryan, T. Gough, R. Vafabakhsh, and R. Golestanian, Self-Motile Colloidal Particles: From Directed Propulsion to Random Walk, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 048102 (2007).
  20. S. J. Ebbens and J. R. Howse, Direct observation of the direction of motion for spherical catalytic swimmers, Langmuir 27, 12293 (2011).
  21. J. Simmchen, J. Katuri, W. E. Uspal, M. N. Popescu, M. Tasinkevych, and S. Sánchez, Topographical pathways guide chemical microswimmers, Nat. Commun. 7, 10598 (2016).
  22. J. Katuri, W. E. Uspal, J. Simmchen, A. Miguel-López, and S. Sánchez, Cross-stream migration of active particles, Sci. Adv. 4, eaao1755 (2018).
  23. M. S. D. Wykes, J. Palacci, T. Adachi, L. Ristroph, X. Zhong, M. D. Ward, J. Zhang, and M. J. Shelley, Dynamic self-assembly of microscale rotors and swimmers, Soft Matter 12, 4584 (2016).
  24. S. Michelin and E. Lauga, Geometric tuning of self-propulsion for Janus catalytic particles, Sci. Rep. 7, 42264 (2017).
  25. H. R. Vutukuri, B. Bet, R. van Roij, M. Dijkstra, and W. T. S. Huck, Rational design and dynamics of self-propelled colloidal bead chains: From rotators to flagella, Sci. Rep. 7, 16758 (2017).
  26. M. Behl, K. Kratz, J. Zotzmann, U. Nöchel, and A. Lendlein, Reversible bidirectional shape-memory polymers, Adv. Mater. 25, 4466 (2013).
  27. M. Behl and A. Lendlein, Shape-memory polymers, Materials Today 10, 20 (2007).
  28. J. Leng, X. Lan, Y. Liu, and S. Du, Shape-memory polymers and their composites: Stimulus methods and applications, Prog. Mater. Sci. 56, 1077 (2011).
  29. A. Bhargava, K. Peng, J. Stieg, R. Mirzaeifar, and S. Shahab, Focused ultrasound actuation of shape memory polymers; acoustic-thermoelastic modeling and testing, RSC Adv. 7, 45452 (2017).
  30. S. Ebbens, D. A. Gregory, G. Dunderdale, J. R. Howse, Y. Ibrahim, T. B. Liverpool, and R. Golestanian, Electrokinetic effects in catalytic platinum-insulator Janus swimmers, Europhys. Lett. 106, 58003 (2014).
  31. A. Brown and W. Poon, Ionic effects in self-propelled Pt-coated Janus swimmers, Soft Matter 10, 4016 (2014).
  32. P. Howell, G. Kozyreff, and J. Ockendon, Applied Solid Mechanics (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2009), Vol. 43.
  33. T. D. Montenegro-Johnson, S. Michelin, and E. Lauga, A regularized singularity approach to phoretic problems, Eur. Phys. J. E 38, 139 (2015).
  34. R. Cortez, L. Fauci, and A. Medovikov, The method of regularized Stokeslets in three dimensions: Analysis, validation, and application to helical swimming, Phys. Fluids 17, 1 (2005).
  35. S. Michelin, T. D Montenegro-Johnson, G. De Canio, N. Lobato-Dauzier, and E. Lauga, Geometric pumping in autophoretic channels, Soft Matter 11, 5804 (2015).
  36. L. C. Schmieding, E. Lauga, and T. D. Montenegro-Johnson, Autophoretic flow on a torus, Phys. Rev. Fluids 2, 034201 (2017).
  37. J. Palacci, S. Sacanna, A. Vatchinsky, P. M. Chaikin, and D. J. Pine, Photoactivated colloidal dockers for cargo transportation, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 135, 15978 (2013).
  38. H. Ceylan, J. Giltinan, K. Kozielski, and M. Sitti, Mobile microrobots for bioengineering applications, Lab on a Chip 17, 1705 (2017).
  39. D. Ahmed, M. Lu, A. Nourhani, P. E. Lammert, Z. Stratton, H. S. Muddana, V. H. Crespi, and T. J. Huang, Selectively manipulable acoustic-powered microswimmers, Sci. Rep. 5, 9744 (2015).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 062201(R)– Published 18 June, 2018
  • Received 7 February 2018
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

©2018 American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation