Robots the size of a human blood cell could monitor everything from human bodies to oil pipelines. But first they've got to get built. A team from MIT has developed a new model for building microscopic robots, a system they're calling "autoperforation."
The system uses a type of carbon called graphene, a super strong material that contains a single layer of atoms. Graphene is heavily hyped these days, but the MIT researchers were able to exploit an unusual quality: Its brittle nature. Like a wafer or an egg, graphene can shatter easily.
"We discovered that you can use the brittleness," says MIT Professor Michael Strano in a press statement. "It's counterintuitive. Before this work, if you told me you could fracture a material to control its shape at the nanoscale, I would have been incredulous."
It works like this: A layer of graphene is placed over an array of polymer dots, tiny semiconductors. As the graphene drapes over the round edges of the dots, lines of strain begin to...
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