Are you ready for robots the size of a human cell with shape-shifting and environment-sensing capabilities armed with electronic, chemical, and photonic payloads?
“You could put the computational power of the spaceship Voyager onto an object the size of a cell,” says Cornell University Physicist Itai Cohen. “Then, where do you go explore?”
Thanks to the Cornell University team, that reality moved one step closer. Researchers have successfully built an exoskeleton for these small-scale creatures. When it detects chemical or thermal fluctuations in its environment, the exoskeleton quickly alters its shape.
“We are trying to build what you might call an ‘exoskeleton’ for electronics,” says Paul McEuen, the John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science and director of the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science. “Right now, you can make little computer chips that do a lot of information-processing … but they don’t know how to move or cause something to bend.”
In order for the machines to move, they enlist the help of bimorph motors. Comprised of two materials, this study uses glass and graphene. When a certain stimulus is applied, the materials bend. Researchers can take advantage of this by placing rigid flat panels at specific locations, allowing control over which location contorts, thus creating folds. These folds can create a variety of structures, such as cubes or tetrahedra.
According to the Cornell Chronicle, one of their folded machines was “three times larger than a red blood cell and three times smaller than a large neuron.”
Compatible with semiconductor manufacturing and strong enough to carry electronic payloads, the team’s design boasts a few significant advantages.
The article, “Graphene-based bimorphs for micron-sized, autonomous origami machines,” in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences outlines the full details of the research.
