Center for Advanced Functional Nanorobots, Department of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Chemistry and Technology Prague, Technicka 5, 166 28, Prague, Czech Republic.
Future Energy and Innovation Laboratory, Central European Institute of Technology, Brno University of Technology, Purkynova 656/123, 621 00, Brno, Czech Republic.
Nanoscale. 2023 Mar 23;15(12):5726-5734. doi: 10.1039/d3nr00098b.
Microrobots are at the forefront of research for biomedical and environmental applications. Whereas a single microrobot exhibits quite low performance in the large-scale environment, swarms of microrobots are representing a powerful tool in biomedical and environmental applications. Here, we fabricated phoretic SbS-based microrobots that exhibited swarming behavior under light illumination without any addition of chemical fuel. The microrobots were prepared in an environmentally friendly way by reacting the precursors with bio-originated templates in aqueous solution in a microwave reactor. The crystalline SbS material provided the microrobots with interesting optical and semiconductive properties. Because of the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) upon light illumination, the microrobots possessed photocatalytic properties. To demonstrate the photocatalytic abilities, industrially used dyes, quinoline yellow and tartrazine were degraded using microrobots in the "on-the-fly" mode. Overall, this proof-of-concept work showed that SbS photoactive material is suitable for designing swarming microrobots for environmental remediation applications.
微型机器人处于生物医学和环境应用研究的前沿。虽然单个微型机器人在大规模环境中的性能相当低，但微型机器人群是生物医学和环境应用中的有力工具。在这里，我们制造了基于 SbS 的浮游微型机器人，它们在光照射下无需添加任何化学燃料即可表现出群体行为。微型机器人通过在微波反应器中将前体与生物起源的模板在水溶液中反应，以环保的方式制备。结晶 SbS 材料为微型机器人提供了有趣的光学和半导体特性。由于光照射时形成了活性氧物种 (ROS)，微型机器人具有光催化特性。为了证明光催化能力，使用微型机器人以“飞行模式”降解了工业上使用的染料喹啉黄和酒石黄。总的来说，这项概念验证工作表明 SbS 光活性材料适合设计用于环境修复应用的群体微型机器人。
