Surface electrochemical actuators for micron-scale fluid pumping and autonomous swimming

ORAL

Abstract

Recently, our group demonstrated a new class of electronic actuators called surface electrochemical actuators (SEAs). They use surface adsorption on a nanometer-thick cantilever to produce micron-scale radii of curvature with only fractions of a volt for actuation. Here we use SEAs to mechanically pump fluid at the micron-scale in several different geometries, both in the rigid panel (Purcell) and flexible (flagella) limits. We further discuss ongoing work to integrate SEAs with photovoltaics to create optically powered swimmers. Our ultimate goal is to create fully autonomous swimming microrobots with onboard electronics that can sense and respond to their environment in complex ways, yet are too small to be resolved by the naked eye.

*This work was supported by the Cornell Center for Materials Research (DMR-1719875), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (MURI: FA9550-16-1-0031), the Army Research Office (ARO W911NF-18-1-0032) and the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science. This work was performed in part at Cornell NanoScale Facility, an NNCI member supported by NSF Grant NNCI-1542018.

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Presenters

  • Michael Reynolds

    • Cornell University

Authors

  • Michael Reynolds

    • Cornell University

  • Alejandro Cortese

    • Cornell University

  • Qingkun Liu

    • Cornell University

  • Wei Wang

    • Cornell University

  • Michael Cao

    • Cornell University
    • Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University

  • David Anthony Muller

    • Cornell University
    • School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University
    • Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University
    • School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA

  • Marc Miskin

    • University of Pennsylvania

  • Itai Cohen

    • Cornell University
    • Physics, Cornell University
    • Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University

  • Paul L McEuen

    • Cornell University