Microscopic robots 'walk' thanks to laser tech

Date:
August 26, 2020
Source:
Cornell University
Summary:
A collaboration has created the first microscopic robots that
incorporate semiconductor components, allowing them to be controlled
- and made to walk - with standard electronic signals.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A Cornell University-led collaboration has created the first microscopic
robots that incorporate semiconductor components, allowing them to be controlled - - and made to walk -- with standard electronic signals.


========================================================================== These robots, roughly the size of paramecium, provide a template
for building even more complex versions that utilize silicon-based intelligence, can be mass produced, and may someday travel through human
tissue and blood.

The collaboration is led by Itai Cohen, professor of physics, Paul
McEuen, the John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science and their former postdoctoral researcher Marc Miskin, who is now an assistant professor
at the University of Pennsylvania.

The walking robots are the latest iteration, and in many ways an
evolution, of Cohen and McEuen's previous nanoscale creations, from
microscopic sensors to graphene-based origami machines.

The new robots are about 5 microns thick (a micron is one-millionth of a meter), 40 microns wide and range from 40 to 70 microns in length. Each
bot consists of a simple circuit made from silicon photovoltaics -- which essentially functions as the torso and brain -- and four electrochemical actuators that function as legs.

The researchers control the robots by flashing laser pulses at
different photovoltaics, each of which charges up a separate set of
legs. By toggling the laser back and forth between the front and back photovoltaics, the robot walks.

The robots are certainly high-tech, but they operate with low voltage
(200 millivolts) and low power (10 nanowatts), and remain strong and
robust for their size. Because they are made with standard lithographic processes, they can be fabricated in parallel: About 1 million bots fit
on a 4-inch silicon wafer.

The researchers are exploring ways to soup up the robots with more
complicated electronics and onboard computation -- improvements that
could one day result in swarms of microscopic robots crawling through and restructuring materials, or suturing blood vessels, or being dispatched
en masse to probe large swaths of the human brain.

"Controlling a tiny robot is maybe as close as you can come to shrinking yourself down. I think machines like these are going to take us into
all kinds of amazing worlds that are too small to see," said Miskin,
the study's lead author.

"This research breakthrough provides exciting scientific opportunity for investigating new questions relevant to the physics of active matter and
may ultimately lead to futuristic robotic materials," said Sam Stanton,
program manager for the Army Research Office, an element of the Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory, which
supported the research.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Cornell_University. Original written
by David Nutt. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Marc Z. Miskin, Alejandro J. Cortese, Kyle Dorsey, Edward
P. Esposito,
Michael F. Reynolds, Qingkun Liu, Michael Cao, David A. Muller,
Paul L.

McEuen, Itai Cohen. Electronically integrated, mass-manufactured,
microscopic robots. Nature, 2020; 584 (7822): 557 DOI:
10.1038/s41586- 020-2626-9 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200826113715.htm

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