Walking crystals may lead to new field of crystal robotics
Researchers have demonstrated that tiny micrometer-sized crystals—just barely visible to the human eye—can "walk" inchworm-style across the slide of a microscope. Other crystals are capable of different modes of locomotion such as rolling, flipping, bending, twisting, and jumping. In the future, these moving crystals may open the doors to the development of crystal-based robots.
The researchers, led by Hideko Koshima at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, have published a paper on walking and rolling crystals in a recent issue of Nature Communications.
"We believe that this finding opens the doors to a new field of crystal robotics," Koshima told Phys.org. "Currently, robots made from metals are rigid and heavy, making them unsuitable for daily interaction with humans. Our goal is to make symbiotic soft robots using mechanical crystals."
In their work, the researchers investigated asymmetric crystals derived from chiral azobenzene. In experiments, they showed that exposing the crystals to alternating hot and cold temperatures (changing between 120° and 160° C over the course of approximately 2 minutes) causes changes in the crystals' shapes.