{"id":149436,"date":"2022-11-04T02:46:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-04T07:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/incorporating-nanoparticles-into-a-porous-hydrogel-to-propel-an-aquabot-with-minimal-voltage"},"modified":"2022-11-04T02:46:00","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T07:46:00","slug":"incorporating-nanoparticles-into-a-porous-hydrogel-to-propel-an-aquabot-with-minimal-voltage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/incorporating-nanoparticles-into-a-porous-hydrogel-to-propel-an-aquabot-with-minimal-voltage","title":{"rendered":"Incorporating nanoparticles into a porous hydrogel to propel an aquabot with minimal voltage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ueLhehKPBUE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A team of researchers from Korea University, Ajou University and Hanyang University, all in the Republic of Korea, has created a tiny aquabot propelled by fins made of a porous hydrogel imbued with nanoparticles. In their paper published in the journal <i>Science Robotics<\/i>, the group describes how the hydrogel works to power a tiny boat and reveals how much voltage was required.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists and engineers have been working for several years to build tiny, soft robots for use in <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/medical+applications\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">medical applications<\/a> and have found that hydrogels are quite suitable for the task. Unfortunately, such materials also have undesirable characteristics, most notably, poor electro-connectivity. In this new effort, the researchers took a new approach to making hydrogels more amenable for use with electricity as a <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/power+source\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">power source <\/a>\u2014adding conductive nanoparticles.<\/p>\n<p>The work involved adding a small number of nanoparticles to a part of a porous hydrogel which they then used as a wrinkled nanomembrane electrode (WNE) <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/actuator\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">actuator<\/a>. Adding the nanoparticles allowed the hydrogel to conduct electricity in a reliable way. Testing showed the actuator could be powered with as little as 3 volts of electricity. The researchers then fashioned two of the actuators into finlike shapes and attached them to a tiny plastic body. Electronics added to the body controlled the electricity sent to the fins. The resulting robot had a water bug appearance, floating on the surface of the water in a tank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A team of researchers from Korea University, Ajou University and Hanyang University, all in the Republic of Korea, has created a tiny aquabot propelled by fins made of a porous hydrogel imbued with nanoparticles. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes how the hydrogel works to power a tiny boat [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-nanotechnology","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}