Amazing stuff!
"A technical marvel, cilia have proved difficult to reproduce in engineering applications, especially at the microscale. ... researchers have now designed a micro-sized artificial cilial system using platinum-based components that can control the movement of fluids at such a scale. The technology could someday enable low-cost, portable diagnostic devices for testing blood samples, manipulating cells or assisting in microfabrication processes. ...
the first to use our new nano actuator to demonstrate artificial cilia that are individually controlled ..."
the first to use our new nano actuator to demonstrate artificial cilia that are individually controlled ..."
From the abstract:
"Cilial pumping is a powerful strategy used by biological organisms to control and manipulate fluids at the microscale. However, despite numerous recent advances in optically, magnetically and electrically driven actuation, development of an engineered cilial platform with the potential for applications has remained difficult to realize. Here we report on active metasurfaces of electronically actuated artificial cilia that can create arbitrary flow patterns in liquids near a surface. ... By combining these unit cells, we create an active cilia metasurface that can generate and switch between any desired surface flow pattern. Finally, we integrate the cilia with a light-powered complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) clock circuit to demonstrate wireless operation. ... These powerful results, demonstrated experimentally and confirmed using theoretical computations, illustrate a pathway towards fine-scale microfluidic manipulation, with applications from microfluidic pumping to microrobotic locomotion."
Cilia metasurfaces for electronically programmable microfluidic manipulation (no public access)
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