FEBRUARY 2021 Southwest Retort

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VIDEO and off, with a higher amount of time in the “on position” resulting in larger bubbles. Then, the team made a mobile bubble robot by shifting the laser’s location. Once the laser turned off, the bubbles dissolved slowly, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces dropping the resin in place. The team then combined multiple bubbles with different Robots are widely used to build cars, paint functions to produce microrobots that could airplanes and sew clothing in factories, but lift and drop parts, move single pieces to the assembly of microscopic components, designated positions, act as a rotational axis such as those for biomedical applications, or push assembled objects. Unbreakable has not yet been automated. Lasers could be connections were made with various joints, the solution. Now, researchers reporting in producing three- and four-pronged gears, a ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have snake-shaped chain and a miniature 3D vehiused lasers to create miniature robots from cle. The bubble microrobots have implicabubbles that lift, drop and manipulate small tions for the future of manufacturing, includpieces into interconnected structures. ing biological tissue engineering, the researchers say. As manufacturing has miniaturized, objects are now being constructed that are only a The authors acknowledge funding from the few hundred micrometers long, or about the National Natural Science Foundation of Chithickness of a sheet of paper. But it is hard to na, the Key Research Program of Frontier position such small pieces by hand. In previSciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciencous studies, scientists created microscopic es and the CAS/SAFEA International Partbubbles using light or sound to assemble 2D nership Program for Creative Research items. Also, in a recent experiment, miTeams. https://youtu.be/e6xqh2YuoBY crobubbles produced by lasers, focused and powerful beams of light, could rotate shapes in 3D space. Although these bubble microrobots could manipulate 2D and 3D objects, they could not connect independent components and then move them as a singular entity. So, Niandong Jiao, Lianquing Liu and colleagues wanted to build on their previous work with lasers to develop bubble microbots that can form inseparable shapes and control their movement. “Integrated Assembly and Flexible Movement of Microparts Using Multifunctional Bubble Microrobots”

The researchers created microbubbles in water by focusing a laser underneath a small part made of resin. The bubble’s size was controlled by rapidly switching the laser on February 2021

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FEBRUARY 2021 Southwest Retort by DFW Section of the ACS - Issuu