The capability of mechanical reconfiguration could lead to a new class of controllable nanoelectromechanical and nanorobotic devices for a variety of fields including drug delivery, optical sensing, communication, molecule release, detection, nanoparticle separation and microfluidic automation.
They demonstrate light can instantly increase, stop and even reverse the rotation orientation of silicon nanomotors in an electric field. This effect and the underlying physical principles have been unveiled for the first time. It switches mechanical motion of rotary nanomotors among various modes instantaneously and effectively.
Nanomotors, which are nanoscale devices capable of converting energy into movement at the cellular and molecular levels, have the potential to be used in everything from drug delivery to nanoparticle separation.
Using light from a laser or light projector at strengths varying from visible to infrared, the UT researchers’ novel technique for reconfiguring the motion of nanomotors is efficient and simple in its function. Nanomotors with tunable speed have already been researched as drug delivery vessels, but using light to adjust the mechanical motions has far wider implications for nanomotors and nanotechnology research more generally.
“The ability to alter the behavior of nanodevices in this way – from passive to active – opens the door to the design of autonomous and intelligent machines at the nanoscale,” Fan said.
Fan describes the working principle of reconfigurable electric nanomotors as a mechanical analogy of electric transistors, the basic building blocks of microchips in cellphones, computers, laptops and other electronic devices that switch on demand to external stimuli.
Researchers discovered a new working mechanism that can readily reconfigure mechanical motions of semiconductor nanowires including acceleration, deceleration, stopping, and reversal of rotation merely by controlling the external light intensity in an E-field. This finding can be considered as a mechanical analogy of field-effect transistors gated by light. We understood the working mechanism with both theoretical analysis and numerical simulations and successfully demonstrated its application in distinguishing semiconductor from metal nanowires in the same suspension. With this discovery, potentially, various nanoentities, devices, and even biological cells could be equipped with mechanical responsiveness and multifold reconfigurability with functionalized semiconductor elements, changing their motion paradigms from passive to dynamic. Individually controlled micro/nanomachines amidst many could be achievable, which couple and reconfigure their operations instantly. This research could open up many opportunities for interdisciplinary fields, including reconfigurable optical devices, nanoelectromechanical system, nanorobots, nanomachines, communication, tunable molecule release, nanoparticle separation, and microfluidic automation.
Highly efficient and widely applicable working mechanisms that allow nanomaterials and devices to respond to external stimuli with controlled mechanical motions could make far-reaching impact to reconfigurable, adaptive, and robotic nanodevices. We report an innovative mechanism that allows multifold reconfiguration of mechanical rotation of semiconductor nanoentities in electric (E) fields by visible light stimulation. When illuminated by light in the visible-to-infrared regime, the rotation speed of semiconductor Si nanowires in E-fields can instantly increase, decrease, and even reverse the orientation, depending on the intensity of the applied light and the AC E-field frequency. This multifold rotational reconfiguration is highly efficient, instant, and facile. Switching between different modes can be simply controlled by the light intensity at an AC frequency. We carry out experiments, theoretical analysis, and simulations to understand the underlying principle, which can be attributed to the optically tunable polarization of Si nanowires in an aqueous suspension and an external E-field. Finally, leveraging this newly discovered effect, we successfully differentiate semiconductor and metallic nanoentities in a noncontact and nondestructive manner. This research could inspire a new class of reconfigurable nanoelectromechanical and nanorobotic devices for optical sensing, communication, molecule release, detection, nanoparticle separation, and microfluidic automation.
Changing the working scheme of nanodevices from static to dynamic, from passive to active, enabling intelligent and autonomous performances, could bring unprecedented impact to an array of applications in electronics, communication, sensing, therapy, and single-cell biology research. Mechanically active materials and structures, which change volume, shape, and mechanical motions in response to external stimuli, are essential for realizing intelligent and autonomous electronics and have received immense research interest. For instance, the widely used shape memory alloys that undergo controlled volume change in external physical fields are now key elements of actuators widely used in aerospace, automobile, and precision instrumentation. Miniaturized mechanical grippers, made of strategically fabricated multilayer thin films with tailorable interfacial stresses, can readily self-fold to capture live cells and sample biological tissues when sensing the acidic environment near the cells. More recently, mimicking live microorganisms in nature, artificial micro/nanorobotic devices have been fabricated with functionality analogous to the behavior of natural organisms. The acoustic hologram technique assembles particles into reconfigurable arbitrary patterns in time-evolving acoustic fields. Many techniques rely on light for motion control. Azobenzene chemical groups form shapes reconfigurable with light-induced isomerization in both macroscopic and molecular scales. These polymers are applied to carry out complex tasks, such as the capture and release of DNA molecules. Self-electrophoresis, based on photochemistry, has been exploited to develop light-guided micromotors with intrinsic asymmetric structures or light-induced asymmetry. Transition of TiO2 microspheres from swarm-like aggregation to monodispersive suspension is observed on exposure to ultraviolet light. The redistribution of electric (E) fields in response to light patterns on photoconductive substrates can readily translocate nanoparticles, cells, or droplets by dielectrophoresis or electrowetting. Plasmonic nanostructures make it possible to control light in a subwavelength scope. With uniquely designed metallic structures, torques can be induced by a laser that compels the rotation. Thus, these remarkable materials that respond to external stimuli with mechanical actuations are highly potential for many unprecedented applications. However, most of these materials to date only respond to stimuli in one manner, for example, linear translocation, bending, rotation, or aggregation, and only work in limited environments. Moreover, to obtain these materials, sophisticated design, synthesis, and functionalization are often required. To overcome these bottlenecks, it is highly desirable to investigate a completely new mechanism in activating nanomaterials with efficient, reversible, and multifold reconfigurabilities.