Bacterial ratchet motors

By R. Di Leonardo, L. Angelani, D. Dell’Arciprete, G. Ruocco, V. Iebba, S. Schippa, M. P. Conte, F. Mecarini, F. Angelis, E. Fabrizio. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009

629 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Self-propelling bacteria are a nanotechnology dream. These unicellular organisms are not just capable of living and reproducing, but they can swim very efficiently, sense the environment, and look for food, all packaged in a body measuring a few microns. Before such perfect machines can be artificially assembled, researchers are beginning to explore new ways to harness bacteria as propelling units for microdevices. Proposed strategies require the careful task of aligning and binding bacterial cells on synthetic surfaces in order to have them work cooperatively. Here we show that asymmetric environments can produce a spontaneous and unidirectional rotation of nanofabricated objects immersed in an active bacterial bath. The propulsion mechanism is provided by the self-assembly of motile Escherichia coli cells along the rotor boundaries. Our results highlight the technological implications of active matter’s ability to overcome the restrictions imposed by the second law of thermodynamics on equilibrium passive fluids.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/446b972d8c3d7663c9531e95a66cee90e0ff9dc8

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Biomedical Engineering

In Condensed Matter Physics

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

Citations in the corpus

Physics of microswimmers—single particle motion and collective behavior: a review (2014, background): “This opens a route for many new applications of microswimmers , e.g., as microgears (Di Leonardo et al., 2010).”
Swarm Robotics: Past, Present, and Future (2021, background): “Current approaches to microrobots and nanorobots are not exploiting conventional hardware but are rather made of active colloidal particles [77], soft-bodied (biological) robots [78], bacteria-powered nanomachines [79], [80], and even controllable genetically engineered organisms [81].”
Active Particles in Complex and Crowded Environments (2016, background): “Going beyond a simple wedge, it is also possible to consider self-starting cogwheels that exhibits a spontaneous rotation when in an active bath (Angelani et al., 2009; Di Leonardo et al., 2010; Sokolov et al., 2010).”
Hydrodynamics of self-propulsion near a boundary: predictions and accuracy of far-field approximations (2012, background): “The strengths of these singularities have been measured experimentally for the organisms Volvox carteri and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii by Drescher et al. (2010), and for E. coli by Drescher et al. (2011). The effects of the Stokeslet quadrupole component of spermatozoan swimming has been suggested by”
Bacterial hydrodynamics (2015, background): “Similarly, bacteria can be harnessed to perform mechanical work and, for example, rotate asymmetric microgears (Di Leonardo et al., 2010; Sokolov et al., 2010).”