Clever Metal Polymer Wings Flap Faster Than a Butterfly Powered by Nothing But Light

The team's "flexible bio-butterfly wing (FBBW)" outperforms nature, and uses nothing but the energy from light to do so.

Gareth Halfacree
4 years agoRobotics

Researchers from Changzhou University and Jiangsu University have published work on light-driven actuators which could be used to create butterfly-like drones whose flight is powered solely by the sun.

"Light-driven actuators that directly convert light into mechanical work have attracted significant attention due to their wireless advantage and ability to be easily controlled," write the researchers in the paper's abstract. "However, a fundamental impediment to their application is that the continuous motion of light-driven flexible actuators usually requires a periodically switching light source or the coordination of other additional hardware.

"Here, for the first time, continuous flapping-wing motion under sunlight is realised through the utilization of a simple nanocrystalline metal polymer bilayer structure without the coordination of additional hardware. The light-driven performance can be controlled by adjusting the grain size of the upper nanocrystalline metallic layer or selecting metals with different thermodynamic parameters."

In testing, the team were able to create "flexible bio-butterfly wings" which flapped at 4.49Hz — faster than the wings of biological butterflies. The wings aren't purely theoretical, either: The technique has been used to create a whirligig and a speedboat, both of which were driven purely by light, as well as to harvest photoelectric energy.

The team's work has been published under closed access terms in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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