微纳马达是指在外界各种能量(光、电、磁、热、化学能等)的刺激下,具有运动性能(包括转动、翻转、梭动、收缩、聚集等)且尺寸为微米或纳米级的微观器件.相对于传统的微纳颗粒而言,微纳马达的可控运行的特性使之在应对未来生物临床、环境治理、微纳器械、微纳加工等领域的实际问题时具备明显优势.光驱动微纳马达作为本领域十分重要的一种类型,由于具有运动远程可控的独特性能而备受关注.本文首先对微纳马达进行了简单的介绍,然后详细地介绍光驱动微纳马达设计的基本原则及驱动机理、光驱动马达的分类、运动特征以及潜在应用,最后对光驱动微纳马达目前面临的挑战以及未来的发展进行了评述.
The micro/nanomotors are nanometer or micrometer-sized devices which can be activated by chemical reactions or external physical energy sources. The activated micro/nanomotors display rotation, rolling, shuttling, delivery, contraction, or collective behavior. Compared with the traditional nanotechnology for drug delivery or cargo transport with passive way (micro/nano particles have been moved by micro-fluid in body), biologically or chemically functionalized micro/nanomotors exhibit more attractive potential in chemistry, environment and biomedicine due to their controllable behavior. Over the past decade, great progress has been achieved in the field of micro/nanomotors, especially in fabrication and application of micro/nanomotors. Various shape and functional micro/nanomotors have been created, such as nanowires, microtubes, Janus spheres and helical springs. The operating mechanisms of such motors mainly are self-eletrophoresis, bubble-driven, light-driven, ultrasound-driven, magnetic field-driven or electrical field-driven. They are strongly related to the kind of energy sources, which can be chemical fuels (H2, HCl, I2, H2O, N2H4 and glucose) or a physical stimuli (light, ultrasound, magnetic and electrical). In addition, the applications of micro/nano motors range from environment to biology, such as drug delivery, DNA identification, ions sensing, degradation of biological and chemical warfare agents, oil remove and so on. As a result, micro/nanomotors have become an attractive and significant research field in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Light is the treasure from the nature, to power micro/nanomotors using renewable and environment-friendly light (especially sunlight) is an excited challenge. Besides, a series of unique operations can be easily realized using light to power micro/nanomotors, such as remote control, tunable speed and cyclic on/off motion, which make the light-driven micro/nanomotors to be one of the most attractive nanomachines. With the efforts of scientists ov