Abstract
Through billions of years of evolution, microorganisms mastered unique swimming behaviors to thrive in complex fluid environments. Limitations in nanofabrication have thus far hindered the ability to design and program synthetic swimmers with the same abilities. Here we encode multi-behavioral responses in microscopic self-propelled tori using nanoscale 3D printing. We show experimentally and theoretically that the tori continuously transition between two primary swimming modes in response to a magnetic field. The tori also manipulated and transported other artificial swimmers, bimetallic nanorods, as well as passive colloidal particles. In the first behavioral mode, the tori accumulated and transported nanorods; in the second mode, nanorods aligned along the toriʼs self-generated streamlines. Our results indicate that such shape-programmed microswimmers have a potential to manipulate biological active matter, e.g. bacteria or cells.
Highlights
Through billions of years of evolution, microorganisms mastered unique swimming behaviors to thrive in complex fluid environments
The intrinsic out-of-equilibrium nature of active systems leads to complex behaviors which often cannot be captured by well-established thermodynamic description
We demonstrate that the tori can manipulate and transport other artificial swimmers, bimetallic nanorods, as well as passive colloidal particles
Summary
Through billions of years of evolution, microorganisms mastered unique swimming behaviors to thrive in complex fluid environments. Bacterial systems show a wide variety of complex behaviors, including spontaneous alignment in the presence of chemical gradients[6] and altering rheological properties of the fluid[7,8,9] Translating these complex behaviors to artificial systems is especially attractive for applications in fluid transport, small-scale mixing, and targeted cargo delivery[10,11] but is hard due to intrinsic nanofabrications limitations. Our findings can be applied to biological systems by utilizing bio-compatible propulsion mechanisms, such as mounted enzymes[32] or light[33] These biocompatible, 3D printed microswimmers would be able to interface and manipulate biological active matter, e.g. motile cells or bacteria–leading to the development of intelligent cell transport and therapy
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