Flying by Magnetism
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and ETH Zurich have developed a micromachine that can perform different actions. First nanomagnets in the components of the microrobots are magnetically programmed and then the various movements are controlled by magnetic fields. Such machines, which are only a few tens of micrometres across, could be used, for example, in the human body to perform small operations.
by
Marc Roland Petitmermet
For more details see the publications below:
- ETH News: English, German
- PSI Press Release: external page English, external page German, external page French
- Mesoscopic Systems
- Jizhai Cui, Tian-Yun Huang, Zhaochu Luo, Paolo Testa, Hongri Gu, Xiang-Zhong Chen, Bradley J. Nelson & Laura J. Heyderman, Nanomagnetic encoding of shape-morphing micromachines. Nature (2019), published online November 6th. external page DOI:10.1038/s41586-019-1713-2