Remember the magnetic robots in Super Marines? Today, materials that can be automatically combined into different shapes according to people's instructions have finally appeared in South Korea.
According to the "Daily Mail" report, a team of scientists from the National Institute of Technology (UNIST) in Ulsan, South Korea, recently launched a team of researchers from around the world to develop a new material. The material can be self-assembled into an "army" to form a united combat unit.
It is understood that the research and development team was inspired by the group behavior of bees and ants and conducted the study. Scientists used computer models in the laboratory to try to replicate this behavior of animals and for the first time designed this new material.
The new material consists of a pile of self-propelled balls and is named Janus colloids (Janus is the mythical "two-sided god"). When the balls are exposed to an electric field, they can be automatically arranged in a variety of shapes.
principle
At first, Dr. Erik Luijten, one of the research leaders, designed a colloidal particle on the computer that can move autonomously in the electric field. In the next lab study, Janus Colloids, a special particle invented by another research leader, Dr. Steve Granick, came in handy. Both sides of this particle have positive and negative charges. When exposed to a magnetic field, the charge on the Janus particles changes, and then the electrostatic interaction between them changes. The result of the change is that some particles are mutually exclusive, some closely fit together, and others remain electrically neutral. What people can see with the naked eye is that they are combined into different shapes according to a certain pattern.
The researchers wrote in the paper:
“Janus colloids, a particle made up of two different hemispheres, is a typical synthetic material. Because of their broken symmetry, they have the ability to promote themselves.â€
Because both sides of the Janus colloids have different properties, they have positive charges on one side and negative charges on the other side. Under the effect of “broken symmetryâ€, when the colloid is exposed to an electric field, the charge carried by the particles will change, and electrostatic effects will occur between different colloids. This means that some particles will repel one another, some will suck each other, and some will remain neutral. In this way, the balls are automatically combined into a shape, such as a chain, a big ball, or clustered. It looks like we have a naked eye and it becomes a regular arrangement.
However, so far, researchers have only tested it with a computer model and a simple two-dimensional Genus colloidal system. In response, the researchers stated that they hope to develop a three-dimensional prototype of the material as soon as possible in order to study what the material actually has.
The research team hopes that their research results can be used in the medical field in the future to achieve the effect of enhancing the effect of drugs. In their vision, drugs are placed in the materials they study, automatically reaching the body where the drug is most needed, and delivering the drug more precisely to a designated place in the body. In addition, they also want to use this kind of material to make magnetic robot-like devices. This material may also be used to create robots that are automatically formed. Although they exist in the form of a single machine, they act in uniform and even become an army.
In the future we may be able to use this material to create a fearless, uniform robot army.