Surface Roughening of Pt-Polystyrene Spherical Janus Micromotors for Enhanced Motion Speed
Le Zhou,
Yi Wei,
Hongwen Zhang,
Zhulin Huang,
Shuyi Zhu,
Zhipeng Zhao,
Yujing Guo,
Hao Fu,
Qian Zhao,
Weiping Cai
Affiliations
Le Zhou
Key Lab of Materials Physics, Anhui Key Lab of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China
Yi Wei
Key Lab of Materials Physics, Anhui Key Lab of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China
Hongwen Zhang
Key Lab of Materials Physics, Anhui Key Lab of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China
Zhulin Huang
Key Lab of Materials Physics, Anhui Key Lab of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China
Shuyi Zhu
Key Lab of Materials Physics, Anhui Key Lab of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China
Zhipeng Zhao
Key Lab of Materials Physics, Anhui Key Lab of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China
Yujing Guo
Key Lab of Materials Physics, Anhui Key Lab of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China
Hao Fu
Key Lab of Materials Physics, Anhui Key Lab of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China
Qian Zhao
Key Lab of Materials Physics, Anhui Key Lab of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China
Weiping Cai
Key Lab of Materials Physics, Anhui Key Lab of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China
Spherical Janus micromotors (SJMs) have attracted much attention, and their high-speed motion is highly desired due to their various potential applications. However, the conventional template-deposition method often leads to an active Pt coating with a smooth surface, which is unbeneficial to speed enhancement in terms of catalytic reaction. Here, a facile surface roughening method is presented to fabricate the Pt-polystyrene (PS) SJMs with rough Pt surface (or Ptr-PS SJMs) by plasma-etching the PS colloidal monolayer and then depositing Pt. The Ptr-PS SJMs can exhibit directional motion pushed by the Pt in the various H2O2 solutions, and they show much higher motion speeds than the Pt-PS SJMs with smooth Pt surfaces at the same H2O2 concentration. The Pt-pushed motion is related to the locally asymmetric catalytic reaction of the Pt coating on PS. The speed is also associated with the surface roughness of the Pt coating. The Pt film with a rough surface causes enhanced motion speed due to the improvement of reaction catalytic activity. This work presents a new route to enhancing the motor motion speed, which is of significance in designing micromotors with high-speed motion.
