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Reduced rotational flows enable the translation of surface-rolling microrobots in confined spaces

Biological microorganisms overcome the Brownian motion at low Reynolds numbers by utilizing symmetry-breaking mechanisms. Inspired by them, various microrobot locomotion methods have been developed at the microscale by breaking the hydrodynamic symmetry. Although the boundary effects have been exten...

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Autores principales: Bozuyuk, Ugur, Aghakhani, Amirreza, Alapan, Yunus, Yunusa, Muhammad, Wrede, Paul, Sitti, Metin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9586970/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36271078
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34023-z
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author Bozuyuk, Ugur
Aghakhani, Amirreza
Alapan, Yunus
Yunusa, Muhammad
Wrede, Paul
Sitti, Metin
author_facet Bozuyuk, Ugur
Aghakhani, Amirreza
Alapan, Yunus
Yunusa, Muhammad
Wrede, Paul
Sitti, Metin
author_sort Bozuyuk, Ugur
collection PubMed
description Biological microorganisms overcome the Brownian motion at low Reynolds numbers by utilizing symmetry-breaking mechanisms. Inspired by them, various microrobot locomotion methods have been developed at the microscale by breaking the hydrodynamic symmetry. Although the boundary effects have been extensively studied for microswimmers and employed for surface-rolling microrobots, the behavior of microrobots in the proximity of multiple wall-based “confinement” is yet to be elucidated. Here, we study the confinement effect on the motion of surface-rolling microrobots. Our experiments demonstrate that the locomotion efficiency of spherical microrollers drastically decreases in confined spaces due to out-of-plane rotational flows generated during locomotion. Hence, a slender microroller design, generating smaller rotational flows, is shown to outperform spherical microrollers in confined spaces. Our results elucidate the underlying physics of surface rolling-based locomotion in confined spaces and present a design strategy with optimal flow generation for efficient propulsion in such areas, including blood vessels and microchannels.
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spelling pubmed-95869702022-10-23 Reduced rotational flows enable the translation of surface-rolling microrobots in confined spaces Bozuyuk, Ugur Aghakhani, Amirreza Alapan, Yunus Yunusa, Muhammad Wrede, Paul Sitti, Metin Nat Commun Article Biological microorganisms overcome the Brownian motion at low Reynolds numbers by utilizing symmetry-breaking mechanisms. Inspired by them, various microrobot locomotion methods have been developed at the microscale by breaking the hydrodynamic symmetry. Although the boundary effects have been extensively studied for microswimmers and employed for surface-rolling microrobots, the behavior of microrobots in the proximity of multiple wall-based “confinement” is yet to be elucidated. Here, we study the confinement effect on the motion of surface-rolling microrobots. Our experiments demonstrate that the locomotion efficiency of spherical microrollers drastically decreases in confined spaces due to out-of-plane rotational flows generated during locomotion. Hence, a slender microroller design, generating smaller rotational flows, is shown to outperform spherical microrollers in confined spaces. Our results elucidate the underlying physics of surface rolling-based locomotion in confined spaces and present a design strategy with optimal flow generation for efficient propulsion in such areas, including blood vessels and microchannels. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9586970/ /pubmed/36271078 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34023-z Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Bozuyuk, Ugur
Aghakhani, Amirreza
Alapan, Yunus
Yunusa, Muhammad
Wrede, Paul
Sitti, Metin
Reduced rotational flows enable the translation of surface-rolling microrobots in confined spaces
title Reduced rotational flows enable the translation of surface-rolling microrobots in confined spaces
title_full Reduced rotational flows enable the translation of surface-rolling microrobots in confined spaces
title_fullStr Reduced rotational flows enable the translation of surface-rolling microrobots in confined spaces
title_full_unstemmed Reduced rotational flows enable the translation of surface-rolling microrobots in confined spaces
title_short Reduced rotational flows enable the translation of surface-rolling microrobots in confined spaces
title_sort reduced rotational flows enable the translation of surface-rolling microrobots in confined spaces
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9586970/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36271078
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34023-z
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