Bio-inspired artificial cilia with magnetic dynamic properties

Abstract

Inspired by the structure and properties of natural cilia, we focused on a facile template-free approach to prepare magnetic artificial cilia grown on the substrate (glass, PDMS, or others). In an applied magnetic field, the cilia formed spontaneously and immediately from magnetic nanoparticles and elastomeric polymer in a liquid solvent by bottom-up self-assembly. The length of prepared cilia could be in the scale of millimeter and reach a high aspect ratio of even over 100. We studied the effect of the magnetic strength applied and the size of nanoparticles to get tunable scale of cilia. The cilia show reversibly bending in an external magnetic field and this bending actuation gave some important functions: to transport macroscopic nonmagnetic materials on the cilia and to mix liquids.

Keywords

artificial cilia / magnetic nanoparticle / actuation / liquids mixing

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Research Fund for Fundamental Key Project (2013CB933000), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 21234001 and 21473007), Doctoral Fund of Ministry of Education of China (20121102110035), and Graduate Student Innovation Practice Foundation of Beihang University.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg