Recent Progress on Micro/Nano Robots and Their applications

A special issue of Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X). This special issue belongs to the section "E:Engineering and Technology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2021) | Viewed by 8051

Special Issue Editor

School of Engineering​, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Interests: micro/nanorobots

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The 1966 movie “Fantastic Voyage” captured the world’s imagination by portraying a microscopic submarine navigating through the human bloodstream to repair blood clots and ultimately save a life. This adventure is not yet on the horizon in 2020, but it inspired rapid development in science and technology to build micro/nanoscale machines and robots to emulate these types of Hollywood sci-fi fantasies. In the past decade, advances in the design, fabrication, actuation, imaging, and navigation of micro/nanorobots have greatly enhanced their power, function, and versatility towards in vivo applications for improved diagnostics and therapies. Micro/nanorobotics is becoming the most emerging and promising field in robotics by providing the unprecedented capacity to precisely interact with biology.

In this special issue, we seek papers on all kinds of micro/nanorobotics from new materials, novel actuation mechanism, fabrication methods, modeling and computation, imaging and navigation methods, to diverse applications. Both original research papers, and review articles are welcome.

Dr. Jinxing Li
Guest Editor

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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11 pages, 20589 KiB  
Article
Surface Tension-Based Alignment of Microfibers on Hydrophilic–Superhydrophobic Grooved Surfaces
by Bo Chang, Jialong Jin and Quan Zhou
Micromachines 2020, 11(11), 973; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi11110973 - 29 Oct 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2721
Abstract
Alignment and orderly distribution of microfibers have a major effect on the mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties of the fiber reinforced materials, biomimetic materials, and soft microsensors. However, it is still a challenging task to precisely align and distribute microfibers and construct complex [...] Read more.
Alignment and orderly distribution of microfibers have a major effect on the mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties of the fiber reinforced materials, biomimetic materials, and soft microsensors. However, it is still a challenging task to precisely align and distribute microfibers and construct complex patterns. This paper proposes a surface tension-based method to align and orderly distribute microfibers. A model was developed to simulate the surface tension driven alignment of the microfiber. We designed and fabricated hydrophilic–superhydrophobic grooved surfaces. We demonstrated that the microfibers can self-align to the hydrophilic–superhydrophobic grooves with different geometries. We studied the influence of the volume of the droplet and bias on the alignment success rate. The results indicate that the process can tolerate large variations of the bias and the volume, unless the volume is not enough to cover the groove. We further investigated the influence of the width of the groove on the alignment accuracy. The results show that the alignment accuracy is largely depending on the size difference between the groove and the microfiber; the better the size of the groove matches the size of the fiber, the higher the alignment accuracy will be achieved. The proposed method has great potential in construction of complex microstructures using microfibers. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Progress on Micro/Nano Robots and Their applications)
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Review

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22 pages, 2398 KiB  
Review
The Energy Conversion behind Micro-and Nanomotors
by Yingmeng Wang, Yingfeng Tu and Fei Peng
Micromachines 2021, 12(2), 222; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi12020222 - 22 Feb 2021
Cited by 20 | Viewed by 4729
Abstract
Inspired by the autonomously moving organisms in nature, artificially synthesized micro-nano-scale power devices, also called micro-and nanomotors, are proposed. These micro-and nanomotors that can self-propel have been used for biological sensing, environmental remediation, and targeted drug transportation. In this article, we will systematically [...] Read more.
Inspired by the autonomously moving organisms in nature, artificially synthesized micro-nano-scale power devices, also called micro-and nanomotors, are proposed. These micro-and nanomotors that can self-propel have been used for biological sensing, environmental remediation, and targeted drug transportation. In this article, we will systematically overview the conversion of chemical energy or other forms of energy in the external environment (such as electrical energy, light energy, magnetic energy, and ultrasound) into kinetic mechanical energy by micro-and nanomotors. The development and progress of these energy conversion mechanisms in the past ten years are reviewed, and the broad application prospects of micro-and nanomotors in energy conversion are provided. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Progress on Micro/Nano Robots and Their applications)
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