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Boston: MIT scientists created the smallest robots that can detect their environment, store data and even perform computational tasks, opening the door to unmanageable health monitoring tools [19659002] a human egg, consisting of tiny electronic circuits made of two-dimensional materials, grafted onto tiny particles called colloids.
Colloids, whose insoluble particles or molecules measure between one billionth and one millionth of a meter in diameter, are so small that they can remain suspended indefinitely in a liquid or even in the air.
By coupling these tiny objects to complex circuits, the researchers hope to lay the foundation for devices that could be dispersed to make diagnoses ranging from the human digestive system to oil. and pipelines, or perhaps to cross the air to measure compounds inside a chemical processor or refinery.
"We wanted to find methods for grafting Michael Strano, a professor at the Mbadachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.
" Colloids can access environments and travel from one place to another. a way that other materials can not, "said Strano.Dust particles, for example, can float indefinitely in the air because they are small enough for random motions to be conferred by the colliding air molecules are stronger than the gravitational pull.
Similarly, the suspended colloids will never land .. Strano said that even though other groups have worked to the creation of such tiny robotic devices, they have emphasized the development of ways to control movement.
However, it is more important to make these devices more functional than mobile. uThe robots, published in Nature Nanotechnology, are self-powered, requiring no external power source or even internal batteries. A single photodiode provides the electrical net that tiny robot circuits need to power their computing and memory circuits.
This is enough to allow them to detect information about their environment, store this data in their memory, and then read data after accomplishing their mission.
Such devices could ultimately be a boon to the oil and gas industry, Strano added. Currently, the main way to check for leaks or other problems in pipelines is to have a team physically drive along the pipeline and to inspect it with expensive instruments [19659011]. the flow, and then removed at the other end, providing a record of the conditions they encountered along the way, including the presence of contaminants that could indicate the location of areas to be problems.
Such particles could also potentially be used for diagnostic purposes in the body, for example to pbad through the digestive tract in search of signs of inflammation or other indicators of the disease, [19659002] the researchers said.
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