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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Light drives ‘microdrones’ every which way

A microscopic vehicle can go forwards, backwards, left or right on command under the control of light of various wavelengths and polarizations.
Lines showing rough figure-of-eight (left) and spiral shapes.

A minuscule drone with two motors can be steered in a figure-of-eight-shaped path (first leg in green, second in blue) or a spiral. Credit: Wu, X. et al. Nature Nanotechnol.

Microscopic drones can be precisely driven using light alone1. These devices could have many applications, such as assembling nanostructures and scanning surfaces with ultrahigh resolution.

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Nature 605, 10 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01132-0

References

  1. Wu, X. et al. Nature Nanotechnol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-022-01099-z (2022).

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