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Micro-Motor - Overview

Generating mechanical power to drive microdevices has great implications in future energy utilization as well as medical science. Fortunately, nature has provided us with numerous brilliant examples of nano-scale molecular machines. Some functional nanodevices derived from living systems, such as motor proteins, can efficiently convert chemical energy into mechanical work.

Using life-form power to propel micromotors has a number of unique advantages over conventional energy utilization process, including efficient conversion of chemical energy into mechanical work and the potential for procedure control. The development of an appropriate interface between such biological materials and synthetic devices should enable us to realize useful hybrid micro-machines.

In this project, we described some micromotors driven by bacteria. The motor is one of the most important parts of the bactomotor project. It provides a surface on which the E. coli cells can bind to and the swimming motion of them can be used to propel it. In order to achieve this design, the well-studied biotin-strepatavidin interaction was applied to bind the bacteria to the motor.

The motor we need should have the following two main characteristics:

1. It should be symmetrical and small enough to match the size of bacteria, saying ~ 50μm.
2. It is feasible that only one side of the motor has biotin binding on it, which means that bacteria can push the motor to rotate in either clockwise or counterclockwise.

Besides, it needs to be rigid and can undergo chemical modifications through which biotin can be coated on its surface.

Taking into account the above considerations, we have designed two versions of motor using either Immobilon-P transfer membrane or the inorganic elemental silicon.