School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen 518055, China.
Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6243, United States.
ACS Nano. 2021 Oct 26;15(10):15446-15460. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.1c07503. Epub 2021 Oct 12.
The recent invention of nanoswimmers-synthetic, powered objects with characteristic lengths in the range of 10-500 nm-has sparked widespread interest among scientists and the general public. As more researchers from different backgrounds enter the field, the study of nanoswimmers offers new opportunities but also significant experimental and theoretical challenges. In particular, the accurate characterization of nanoswimmers is often hindered by strong Brownian motion, convective effects, and the lack of a clear way to visualize them. When coupled with improper experimental designs and imprecise practices in data analysis, these issues can translate to results and conclusions that are inconsistent and poorly reproducible. This Perspective follows the course of a typical nanoswimmer investigation from synthesis through to applications and offers suggestions for best practices in reporting experimental details, recording videos, plotting trajectories, calculating and analyzing mobility, eliminating drift, and performing control experiments, in order to improve the reliability of the reported results.
最近发明的纳米游泳者——具有 10-500nm 范围内特征长度的合成、动力物体——引起了科学家和公众的广泛兴趣。随着越来越多来自不同背景的研究人员进入该领域，纳米游泳者的研究提供了新的机会，但也带来了重大的实验和理论挑战。特别是，纳米游泳者的准确表征常常受到强布朗运动、对流效应和缺乏清晰可视化方法的阻碍。当与实验设计不当和数据分析不精确结合时，这些问题可能会导致结果和结论不一致且难以重现。本观点从合成到应用跟踪了典型的纳米游泳者研究的过程，并就报告实验细节、记录视频、绘制轨迹、计算和分析迁移率、消除漂移以及进行对照实验提出了最佳实践建议，以提高报告结果的可靠性。
