Related papers: Soft Colloidal Robots: Magnetically Guided Liquid …
Soft materials such as colloidal suspensions, polymer solutions and liquid crystals are constituted by mesoscopic entities held together by weak forces. Their mechanical moduli are several orders of magnitude lower than those of atomic…
Imagine a swarm of terrestrial robots that can explore an environment, and, upon completion of this task, reconfigure into a spherical ball and roll out. This dimensional change alters the dynamics of locomotion and can assist them to…
Widely known for their uses in displays and electro-optics, liquid crystals are more than just technological marvels. They vividly reveal the topology and structure of various solitonic and singular field configurations, often markedly…
Magnetic skyrmions are localized, topologically protected spin-structures that have been proposed for storing or processing information due to their intriguing dynamical and transport properties. Important in terms of applications is the…
Electric field induced collective reorientation of nematic molecules placed between two flat parallel electrodes is of importance for both fundamental science and practical applications. This reorientation is either homogeneous over the…
Combining topology and plasmonics paradigms in nanocolloidal systems may enable new means of pre-engineering desired composite material properties. Here we design and realize orientationally ordered assemblies of noble metal nanoparticles…
Magnetic skyrmions are mesmerizing spin textures with peculiar topological and dynamical properties, typically the product of competing interactions in ferromagnets, and with great technological potential [1-5]. Researchers have long…
In recent years, the medical industry has witnessed a growing interest in minimally invasive procedures, with magnetic microrobots emerging as a promising approach. These micro-robots possess the ability to navigate through various media,…
Liquid crystals are known for their optical birefringence, a property that gives rise to intricate patterns and colors when viewed in a microscope between crossed polarisers. Resulting images are rich in geometric patterns and serve as…
Magnetic skyrmions are topologically-protected spin textures that exhibit fascinating physical behaviors and large potential in highly energy efficient spintronic device applications. The main obstacles so far are that skyrmions have been…
Many soft-body organisms found in nature flourish underwater. Similarly, soft robots are potentially well-suited for underwater environments partly because the problematic effects of gravity, friction, and harmonic oscillations are less…
A wide range of microorganisms, e.g. bacteria, propel themselves by rotation of soft helical tails, also known as flagella. Due to the small size of these organisms, viscous forces overwhelm inertial effects and the flow is at low Reynolds…
Merons and skyrmions are classical topological solitons. However, they will become quantum mechanical objects when their sizes are of the order of nanometers. Recently, quantum computation based on nanoscale skyrmions was proposed. Here, we…
Here we demonstrate a synthetic micro-engine, based on long-range controlled movement of colloidal particles, which is induced by a local catalytic reaction. The directed motion at long timescales was achieved by placing specially designed…
The transport of motile entities across modulated energy landscapes plays an important role in a range of phenomena in biology, colloidal science and solid-state physics. Here, an easily implementable strategy that allows for the collective…
Microscopic robots could perform tasks with high spatial precision, such as acting in biological tissues on the scale of individual cells, provided they can reach precise locations. This paper evaluates the feasibility of in vivo locomotion…
Skyrmions are topologically stable vector textures as potential information carriers for high-density data storage and communications, especially boosted by the recently emerging meta-generators of skyrmions in electromagnetic fields.…
Spin-orbit torques (SOTs) are widely used to control magnetization in nanoscale electric systems and are typically assumed to drive skyrmion nucleation and motion in a deterministic manner, especially in materials with strong…
Integrating Brain-Machine Interfaces into non-clinical applications like robot motion control remains difficult - despite remarkable advancements in clinical settings. Specifically, EEG-based motor imagery systems are still error-prone,…
Soft robotics leverages deformable materials to develop robots capable of navigating unstructured and dynamic environments. Silicone Voxel-Based Soft Robots (Silibots) are a type of pneumatically actuated soft robots that rely on the…