A team of scientists from Cornell University (USA) has created micron-sized shape memory actuators that allow 2D materials to fold into 3D configurations.
How did they do it?
With a quick jolt of voltage. After this, once the material is folded, it maintains its shape.
“We want to have robots that are microscopic but have brains on board,” said Itai Cohen, a researcher with the Laboratory for Atomic and Solid State Physics and Cornell University’s Kavli Institute for Nanoscale Science.
“That means it must have appendages that are driven by complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistors, basically a computer chip in a robot that is 100 microns on a side. Imagine a million manufactured microscopic robots that are released from a wafer, which bend, release and perform their tasks, even assembling themselves into more complicated structures. That is the vision . “
The machines fold themselves quickly, in 100 milliseconds, and can flatten and retract thousands of times . It only takes one volt to bring them to life.
“They work by electrochemical oxidation / reduction of a platinum surface, creating a stress in the oxidized layer that causes bending,” say the experts. “They bend to the smallest radius of curvature of any electrically controlled microactuator (500 nm), are fast (less than 100 milliseconds operation) and operate within the electrochemical window of water, avoiding the generation of bubbles associated with oxygen evolution “ .
The future
“These innovations may one day lead to nano-Roomba-like robots that can clean bacterial infection from human tissue , micro-factories that can transform manufacturing, and robotic surgical instruments that are ten times smaller than current devices,” they conclude.
Referencia: Qingkun Liu et al. 2021. Micrometer-sized electrically programmable shape-memory actuators for low-power microrobotics. Science Robotics 6 (52)
