Tiny Microminiature Liquid Crystal Elastomer Rotational Motor Is Driven Purely by Laser Light
Exploiting a material's ability to deform when exposed to light, the tiny motor can spin using nothing but the energy from a laser.
Researchers from the University of Warsaw, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, the Warsaw Military University of Technology, and the Polish Academy of Science have unveiled a tiny 5.5mm-diameter micromotor which rotates when exposed to light from a laser beam — albeit slowly.
Rotational movement is key to a whole variety of machines, but is almost wholly artificial — few things in nature exhibit rotational movement. Building large-scale rotational motors is a well-established science, but shrinking that down to microminiature scales has proven a challenge — one a team of researchers claims to have met using liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) and a laser.
The team's design, a micromotor measuring just 5.5mm in diameter and with a 5mm rotor ring, rotates when a laser beam causes its materials to deform. Inspired by the motors which power autofocus camera lenses, the motor requires no external power beyond that harvested from the laser light — though rotates rather slower than its larger electrical equivalents.
"Despite low speed, around one rotation per minute, our motor allows us to look at the micromechanics of intelligent soft materials from a different perspective," claims Dr. Klaudia Dradrach of the work, "and gives food for thought when it comes to their potential use."
The team's work has been published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces under closed access terms.