Nature Communications (May 2020)

Magnetic cilia carpets with programmable metachronal waves

  • Hongri Gu,
  • Quentin Boehler,
  • Haoyang Cui,
  • Eleonora Secchi,
  • Giovanni Savorana,
  • Carmela De Marco,
  • Simone Gervasoni,
  • Quentin Peyron,
  • Tian-Yun Huang,
  • Salvador Pane,
  • Ann M. Hirt,
  • Daniel Ahmed,
  • Bradley J. Nelson

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16458-4
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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Synthetic hair-like structures (cilia) controlled by an external field have been developed, especially for microfluidic applications. Here, Gu et al. make soft artificial cilia carpets with programmable magnetization patterns and utilize them to achieve pumping and locomotion in a soft robotic model.