Abstract
The past decade has seen intriguing reports and heated debates concerning the chemically-driven enhanced motion of objects ranging from small molecules to millimetre-size synthetic robots. These objects, in solutions in which chemical reactions were occurring, were observed to diffuse (spread non-directionally) or swim (move directionally) at rates exceeding those expected from Brownian motion alone. The debates have focused on whether observed enhancement is an experimental artefact or a real phenomenon. If the latter were true, then we would also need to explain how the chemical energy is converted into mechanical work. In this Perspective, we summarize and discuss recent observations and theories of active diffusion and swimming. Notably, the chemomechanical coupling and magnitude of diffusion enhancement are strongly size-dependent and should vanish as the size of the swimmers approaches the molecular scale. We evaluate the reliability of common techniques to measure diffusion coefficients and finish by considering the potential applications and chemical to mechanical energy conversion efficiencies of typical nanoswimmers and microswimmers.
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.References
Lancia, F., Ryabchun, A. & Katsonis, N. Life-like motion driven by artificial molecular machines. Nat. Rev. Chem. 3, 536–551 (2019).
Aprahamian, I. The future of molecular machines. ACS Cent. Sci. 6, 347–358 (2020).
Wang, J. Can man-made nanomachines compete with nature biomotors? ACS Nano 3, 4–9 (2009).
Ozin, G. A., Manners, I., Fournier-Bidoz, S. & Arsenault, A. Dream nanomachines. Adv. Mater. 17, 3011–3018 (2005).
Carter, N. J. & Cross, R. A. Mechanics of the kinesin step. Nature 435, 308–312 (2005).
García-López, V. et al. Molecular machines open cell membranes. Nature 548, 567–572 (2017).
Orozco, J. et al. Micromotor-based high-yielding fast oxidative detoxification of chemical threats. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 52, 13276–13279 (2013).
de Ávila, B. E.-F. et al. Micromotor-enabled active drug delivery for in vivo treatment of stomach infection. Nat. Commun. 8, 272 (2017).
Saper, G. & Hess, H. Synthetic systems powered by biological molecular motors. Chem. Rev. 120, 288–309 (2020).
Roke, D., Wezenberg, S. J. & Feringa, B. L. Molecular rotary motors: unidirectional motion around double bonds. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 9423–9431 (2018).
Zhang, L., Marcos, V. & Leigh, D. A. Molecular machines with bio-inspired mechanisms. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 9397–9404 (2018).
Noji, H., Yasuda, R., Yoshida, M. & Kinosita, K. Direct observation of the rotation of F1-ATPase. Nature 386, 299–302 (1997).
Soong, R. K. et al. Powering an inorganic nanodevice with a biomolecular motor. Science 290, 1555–1558 (2000).
Dennis, J. R., Howard, J. & Vogel, V. Molecular shuttles: directed motion of microtubules along nanoscale kinesin tracks. Nanotechnology 10, 232 (1999).
Hess, H. Toward devices powered by biomolecular motors. Science 312, 860–861 (2006).
Magdanz, V. et al. Spermatozoa as functional components of robotic microswimmers. Adv. Mater. 29, 1606301 (2017).
Pavlick, R. A., Dey, K. K., Sirjoosingh, A., Benesi, A. & Sen, A. A catalytically driven organometallic molecular motor. Nanoscale 5, 1301–1304 (2013).
Wang, H. et al. Boosted molecular mobility during common chemical reactions. Science 369, 537–541 (2020).
Muddana, H. S., Sengupta, S., Mallouk, T. E., Sen, A. & Butler, P. J. Substrate catalysis enhances single-enzyme diffusion. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 132, 2110–2111 (2010).
Sengupta, S. et al. Enzyme molecules as nanomotors. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 135, 1406–1414 (2013).
Riedel, C. et al. The heat released during catalytic turnover enhances the diffusion of an enzyme. Nature 517, 227–230 (2015).
Ma, X., Hortelão, A. C., Patiño, T. & Sánchez, S. Enzyme catalysis to power micro/nanomachines. ACS Nano 10, 9111–9122 (2016).
Ma, X. et al. Enzyme-powered hollow mesoporous Janus nanomotors. Nano Lett. 15, 7043–7050 (2015).
Purcell, E. M. Life at low Reynolds number. Am. J. Phys. 45, 3–11 (1977).
Ishimoto, K. & Yamada, M. A rigorous proof of the scallop theorem and a finite mass effect of a microswimmer. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1107.5938 (2011).
Lauga, E. Enhanced diffusion by reciprocal swimming. Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 178101 (2011).
Howse, J. R. et al. Self-motile colloidal particles: from directed propulsion to random walk. Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 048102 (2007).
Yamamoto, D. & Shioi, A. Self-propelled nano/micromotors with a chemical reaction: underlying physics and strategies of motion control. KONA Powder Part J. 32, 2–22 (2015).
Paxton, W. F., Sen, A. & Mallouk, T. E. Motility of catalytic nanoparticles through self-generated forces. Chem. Eur. J. 11, 6462–6470 (2005).
Lee, T. C. et al. Self-propelling nanomotors in the presence of strong Brownian forces. Nano Lett. 14, 2407–2412 (2014).
Wang, W., Duan, W., Sen, A. & Mallouk, T. E. Catalytically powered dynamic assembly of rod-shaped nanomotors and passive tracer particles. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 110, 17744–17749 (2013).
Bunea, A.-I., Pavel, I.-A., David, S. & Gáspár, S. Modification with hemeproteins increases the diffusive movement of nanorods in dilute hydrogen peroxide solutions. Chem. Commun. 49, 8803–8805 (2013).
Jun, I.-K. & Hess, H. A biomimetic, self-pumping membrane. Adv. Mater. 22, 4823–4825 (2010).
Abécassis, B., Cottin-Bizonne, C., Ybert, C., Ajdari, A. & Bocquet, L. Boosting migration of large particles by solute contrasts. Nat. Mater. 7, 785–789 (2008).
Paustian, J. S. et al. Direct measurements of colloidal solvophoresis under imposed solvent and solute gradients. Langmuir 31, 4402–4410 (2015).
Velegol, D., Garg, A., Guha, R., Kar, A. & Kumar, M. Origins of concentration gradients for diffusiophoresis. Soft Matter 12, 4686–4703 (2016).
Golestanian, R., Liverpool, T. B. & Ajdari, A. Propulsion of a molecular machine by asymmetric distribution of reaction products. Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 220801 (2005).
Arqué, X. et al. Intrinsic enzymatic properties modulate the self-propulsion of micromotors. Nat. Commun. 10, 2826 (2019).
Patiño, T. et al. Influence of enzyme quantity and distribution on the self-propulsion of non-Janus urease-powered micromotors. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 140, 7896–7903 (2018).
Ismagilov, R. F., Schwartz, A., Bowden, N. & Whitesides, G. M. Autonomous movement and self-assembly. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 41, 652–654 (2002).
Fournier-Bidoz, S., Arsenault, A. C., Manners, I. & Ozin, G. A. Synthetic self-propelled nanorotors. Chem. Commun. 4, 441–443 (2005).
Sitt, A. et al. Microscale rockets and picoliter containers engineered from electrospun polymeric microtubes. Small 12, 1432–1439 (2016).
Gibbs, J. G. & Zhao, Y.-P. Autonomously motile catalytic nanomotors by bubble propulsion. Appl. Phys. Lett. 94, 163104 (2009).
Nourhani, A., Karshalev, E., Soto, F. & Wang, J. Multigear bubble propulsion of transient micromotors. Research 2020, 7823615 (2020).
Wang, H., Zhao, G. & Pumera, M. Beyond platinum: bubble-propelled micromotors based on Ag and MnO2 catalysts. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 136, 2719–2722 (2014).
Gao, W., Pei, A. & Wang, J. Water-driven micromotors. ACS Nano 6, 8432–8438 (2012).
Zhang, X., Chen, C., Wu, J. & Ju, H. Bubble-propelled jellyfish-like micromotors for DNA sensing. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 11, 13581–13588 (2019).
Abdelmohsen, L. K. E. A. et al. Dynamic loading and unloading of proteins in polymeric stomatocytes: formation of an enzyme-loaded supramolecular nanomotor. ACS Nano 10, 2652–2660 (2016).
Nijemeisland, M., Abdelmohsen, L. K. E. A., Huck, W. T. S., Wilson, D. A. & van Hest, J. C. M. A compartmentalized out-of-equilibrium enzymatic reaction network for sustained autonomous movement. ACS Cent. Sci. 2, 843–849 (2016).
Gao, W. et al. Artificial micromotors in the mouse’s stomach: a step toward in vivo use of synthetic motors. ACS Nano 9, 117–123 (2015).
Li, J. et al. Enteric micromotor can selectively position and spontaneously propel in the gastrointestinal tract. ACS Nano 10, 9536–9542 (2016).
Wang, T., Zheng, M., Wang, L., Ji, L. & Wang, S. Crucial role of an aerophobic substrate in bubble-propelled nanomotor aggregation. Nanotechnology 31, 355504 (2020).
Chi, Q., Wang, Z., Tian, F., You, J. & Xu, S. A review of fast bubble-driven micromotors powered by biocompatible fuel: low-concentration fuel, bioactive fluid and enzyme. Micromachines 9, 537 (2018).
Jee, A.-Y., Dutta, S., Cho, Y.-K., Tlusty, T. & Granick, S. Enzyme leaps fuel antichemotaxis. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 14–18 (2018).
Zhao, X. et al. Substrate-driven chemotactic assembly in an enzyme cascade. Nat. Chem. 10, 311–317 (2018).
Illien, P. et al. Exothermicity is not a necessary condition for enhanced diffusion of enzymes. Nano Lett. 17, 4415–4420 (2017).
Golestanian, R. Synthetic mechanochemical molecular swimmer. Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 018103 (2010).
Golestanian, R. Enhanced diffusion of enzymes that catalyze exothermic reactions. Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 108102 (2015).
Tsekouras, K., Gabizon, R. C., Marqusee, R., Pressé, S., Bustamante, C. Comment on “enhanced diffusion of enzymes that catalyze exothermic reactions” by R. Golestanian. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.05433 (2016).
Golestanian, R. Reply to comment on “enhanced diffusion of enzymes that catalyze exothermic reactions”. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.07469 (2016).
Illien, P., Adeleke-Larodo, T. & Golestanian, R. Diffusion of an enzyme: the role of fluctuation-induced hydrodynamic coupling. EPL 119, 40002 (2017).
Adeleke-Larodo, T., Illien, P. & Golestanian, R. Fluctuation-induced hydrodynamic coupling in an asymmetric, anisotropic dumbbell. Eur. Phys. J. E 42, 1–10 (2019).
Bai, X. & Wolynes, P. G. On the hydrodynamics of swimming enzymes. J. Chem. Phys. 143, 165101 (2015).
Feng, M. & Gilson, M. K. A thermodynamic limit on the role of self-propulsion in enhanced enzyme diffusion. Biophys. J. 116, 1898–1906 (2019).
Zhang, Y. & Hess, H. Enhanced diffusion of catalytically active enzymes. ACS Cent. Sci. 5, 939–948 (2019).
Zhang, Y., Armstrong, M. J., Bassir Kazeruni, N. M. & Hess, H. Aldolase does not show enhanced diffusion in dynamic light scattering experiments. Nano Lett. 18, 8025–8029 (2018).
Günther, J.-P., Majer, G. & Fischer, P. Absolute diffusion measurements of active enzyme solutions by NMR. J. Chem. Phys. 150, 124201 (2019).
Chen, Z. et al. Single-molecule diffusometry reveals no catalysis-induced diffusion enhancement of alkaline phosphatase as proposed by FCS experiments. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117, 21328–21335 (2020).
Feng, M. & Gilson, M. K. Enhanced diffusion and chemotaxis of enzymes. Annu. Rev. Biophys. 49, 87–105 (2020).
Jee, A.-Y., Tsvi, T. & Granick, S. Master curve of boosted diffusion for 10 catalytic enzymes. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117, 29435–29441 (2020).
Astumian, R. D. Microscopic reversibility as the organizing principle of molecular machines. Nat. Nanotechnol. 7, 684–688 (2012).
Astumian, R. D. Thermodynamics and kinetics of molecular motors. Biophys. J. 98, 2401–2409 (2010).
Astumian, R. D. Trajectory and cycle-based thermodynamics and kinetics of molecular machines: the importance of microscopic reversibility. Acc. Chem. Res. 51, 2653–2661 (2018).
Günther, J.-P., Börsch, M. & Fischer, P. Diffusion measurements of swimming enzymes with fluorescence correlation spectroscopy. Acc. Chem. Res. 51, 1911–1920 (2018).
Jee, A.-Y., Chen, K., Tlusty, T., Zhao, J. & Granick, S. Enhanced diffusion and oligomeric enzyme dissociation. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 141, 20062–20068 (2019).
Xu, M., Ross, J. L., Valdez, L. & Sen, A. Direct single molecule imaging of enhanced enzyme diffusion. Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 128101 (2019).
Novotný, F. & Pumera, M. Nanomotor tracking experiments at the edge of reproducibility. Sci. Rep. 9, 13222 (2019).
Seo, M., Park, S., Lee, D., Lee, H. & Kim, S. J. Continuous and spontaneous nanoparticle separation by diffusiophoresis. Lab Chip 20, 4118–4127 (2020).
Schurr, J. M., Fujimoto, B. S., Huynh, L. & Chiu, D. T. A theory of macromolecular chemotaxis. J. Phys. Chem. B 117, 7626–7652 (2013).
Agudo-Canalejo, J., Illien, P. & Golestanian, R. Phoresis and enhanced diffusion compete in enzyme chemotaxis. Nano Lett. 18, 2711–2717 (2018).
Mohajerani, F., Zhao, X., Somasundar, A., Velegol, D. & Sen, A. A theory of enzyme chemotaxis: from experiments to modeling. Biochemistry 57, 6256–6263 (2018).
Huang, R. et al. Direct observation of the full transition from ballistic to diffusive Brownian motion in a liquid. Nat. Phys. 7, 576–580 (2011).
Rossi, C. & Bianchi, E. Diffusion of small molecules. Nature 189, 822–824 (1961).
Dey, K. K. et al. Dynamic coupling at the Ångström scale. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 55, 1113–1117 (2016).
Dey, K. K. Dynamic coupling at low Reynolds number. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 58, 2208–2228 (2019).
Colberg, P. H. & Kapral, R. Ångström-scale chemically powered motors. EPL 106, 30004 (2014).
Gruebele, M. & Wolynes, P. G. Vibrational energy flow and chemical reactions. Acc. Chem. Res. 37, 261–267 (2004).
Hess, H., Asmis, K. R., Leisner, T. & Wöste, L. Vibrational wave packet dynamics in the silver tetramer probed by NeNePo femtosecond pump–probe spectroscopy. Eur. Phys. J. D 16, 145–149 (2001).
MacDonald, T. S. C., Price, W. S., Astumian, R. D. & Beves, J. E. Enhanced diffusion of molecular catalysts is due to convection. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 58, 18864–18867 (2019).
Günther, J.-P. et al. Comment on “boosted molecular mobility during common chemical reactions”. Science 371, eabe8322 (2021).
Wang, H. et al. Response to comment on “boosted molecular mobility during common chemical reactions”. Science 371, eabe8678 (2021).
Pushkin, D. O., Shum, H. & Yeomans, J. M. Fluid transport by individual microswimmers. J. Fluid Mech. 726, 5–25 (2013).
Mathijssen, A. J. T. M., Pushkin, D. O. & Yeomans, J. M. Tracer trajectories and displacement due to a micro-swimmer near a surface. J. Fluid Mech. 773, 498–519 (2015).
Morozov, A. & Marenduzzo, D. Enhanced diffusion of tracer particles in dilute bacterial suspensions. Soft Matter 10, 2748–2758 (2014).
Miño, G. et al. Enhanced diffusion due to active swimmers at a solid surface. Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 048102 (2011).
Wang, Y. et al. Bipolar electrochemical mechanism for the propulsion of catalytic nanomotors in hydrogen peroxide solutions. Langmuir 22, 10451–10456 (2006).
Zhao, X. et al. Enhanced diffusion of passive tracers in active enzyme solutions. Nano Lett. 17, 4807–4812 (2017).
Orozco, J. et al. Bubble-propelled micromotors for enhanced transport of passive tracers. Langmuir 30, 5082–5087 (2014).
Sengupta, S. et al. Self-powered enzyme micropumps. Nat. Chem. 6, 415–422 (2014).
Sengupta, S. et al. DNA polymerase as a molecular motor and pump. ACS Nano 8, 2410–2418 (2014).
Zhang, Y., Tsitkov, S. & Hess, H. Complex dynamics in a two-enzyme reaction network with substrate competition. Nat. Catal. 1, 276–281 (2018).
Ortiz-Rivera, I., Shum, H., Agrawal, A., Sen, A. & Balazs, A. C. Convective flow reversal in self-powered enzyme micropumps. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 113, 2585–2590 (2016).
Maroto, J. A., Pérez-Muñuzuri, V. & Romero-Cano, M. S. Introductory analysis of Benard–Marangoni convection. Eur. J. Phys. 28, 311–320 (2007).
Cheang, U. K., Roy, D., Lee, J. H. & Kim, M. J. Fabrication and magnetic control of bacteria-inspired robotic microswimmers. Appl. Phys. Lett. 97, 213704 (2010).
Elson, E. L. Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy: past, present, future. Biophys. J. 101, 2855–2870 (2011).
Koppel, D. E. Statistical accuracy in fluorescence correlation spectroscopy. Phys. Rev. A 10, 1938–1945 (1974).
Wohland, T., Rigler, R. & Vogel, H. The standard deviation in fluorescence correlation spectroscopy. Biophys. J. 80, 2987–2999 (2001).
Saffarian, S. & Elson, E. L. Statistical analysis of fluorescence correlation spectroscopy: the standard deviation and bias. Biophys. J. 84, 2030–2042 (2003).
Enderlein, J., Gregor, I., Patra, D. & Fitter, J. Statistical analysis of diffusion coefficient determination by fluorescence correlation spectroscopy. J. Fluoresc. 15, 415–422 (2005).
Heinemann, F., Betaneli, V., Thomas, F. A. & Schwille, P. Quantifying lipid diffusion by fluorescence correlation spectroscopy: a critical treatise. Langmuir 28, 13395–13404 (2012).
Enderlein, J. Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (IUPAC Technical Report). Pure Appl. Chem. 85, 999–1016 (2013).
Kandula, H. N., Jee, A.-Y. & Granick, S. Robustness of FCS (fluorescence correlation spectroscopy) with quenchers present. J. Phys. Chem. A 123, 10184–10189 (2019).
Barbotin, A., Galiani, S., Urbančič, I., Eggeling, C. & Booth, M. J. Adaptive optics allows STED-FCS measurements in the cytoplasm of living cells. Opt. Express 27, 23378–23395 (2019).
Tsuboi, Y., Shoji, T. & Kitamura, N. Optical trapping of amino acids in aqueous solutions. J. Phys. Chem. C. 114, 5589–5593 (2010).
Pagès, G., Gilard, V., Martino, R. & Malet-Martino, M. Pulsed-field gradient nuclear magnetic resonance measurements (PFG NMR) for diffusion ordered spectroscopy (DOSY) mapping. Analyst 142, 3771–3796 (2017).
Antalek, B. Using pulsed gradient spin echo NMR for chemical mixture analysis: how to obtain optimum results. Concepts Magn. Reson. 14, 225–258 (2002).
Kiraly, P., Swan, I., Nilsson, M. & Morris, G. A. Improving accuracy in DOSY and diffusion measurements using triaxial field gradients. J. Magn. Reson. 270, 24–30 (2016).
Connell, M. A. et al. Improving the accuracy of pulsed field gradient NMR diffusion experiments: correction for gradient non-uniformity. J. Magn. Reson. 198, 121–131 (2009).
Dey, K. K. et al. Chemotactic separation of enzymes. ACS Nano 8, 11941–11949 (2014).
Karshalev, E., Esteban-Fernández de Ávila, B. & Wang, J. Micromotors for “chemistry-on-the-fly”. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 140, 3810–3820 (2018).
Singh, V. V., Kaufmann, K., Esteban-Fernández de Ávila, B., Uygun, M. & Wang, J. Nanomotors responsive to nerve-agent vapor plumes. Chem. Commun. 52, 3360–3363 (2016).
Li, J. et al. Micromotors spontaneously neutralize gastric acid for pH-responsive payload release. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 56, 2156–2161 (2017).
Esteban-Fernández de Ávila, B. et al. Hybrid biomembrane-functionalized nanorobots for concurrent removal of pathogenic bacteria and toxins. Sci. Robot. 3, eaat0485 (2018).
Esteban-Fernández de Ávila, B. et al. Acoustically propelled nanomotors for intracellular siRNA delivery. ACS Nano 10, 4997–5005 (2016).
Joseph, A. et al. Chemotactic synthetic vesicles: design and applications in blood–brain barrier crossing. Sci. Adv. 3, e1700362 (2017).
Jurado-Sánchez, B. & Wang, J. Micromotors for environmental applications: a review. Environ. Sci. Nano. 5, 1530–1544 (2018).
Wang, J., Dong, R., Wu, H., Cai, Y. & Ren, B. A review on artificial micro/nanomotors for cancer-targeted delivery, diagnosis, and therapy. Nano Micro Lett. 12, 11 (2019).
Ou, J. et al. Micro/nanomotors toward biomedical applications: the recent progress in biocompatibility. Small 16, 1906184 (2020).
Peng, F., Tu, Y. & Wilson, D. A. Micro/nanomotors towards in vivo application: cell, tissue and biofluid. Chem. Soc. Rev. 46, 5289–5310 (2017).
Katuri, J., Ma, X., Stanton, M. M. & Sánchez, S. Designing micro- and nanoswimmers for specific applications. Acc. Chem. Res. 50, 2–11 (2017).
Li, J., Esteban-Fernández de Ávila, B., Gao, W., Zhang, L. & Wang, J. Micro/nanorobots for biomedicine: delivery, surgery, sensing, and detoxification. Sci. Robot. 2, eaam6431 (2017).
Gao, C. Y. et al. Biomedical micro-/nanomotors: from overcoming biological barriers to in vivo imaging. Adv. Mater. 33, 2000512 (2021).
Ramaiya, A., Roy, B., Bugiel, M. & Schäffer, E. Kinesin rotates unidirectionally and generates torque while walking on microtubules. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 114, 10894–10899 (2017).
Kinosita, K., Yasuda, R., Noji, H. & Adachi, K. A rotary molecular motor that can work at near 100% efficiency. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 355, 473–489 (2000).
Sumi, T. & Klumpp, S. Is F1-ATPase a rotary motor with nearly 100% efficiency? Quantitative analysis of chemomechanical coupling and mechanical slip. Nano Lett. 19, 3370–3378 (2019).
Chattopadhyay, S., Moldovan, R., Yeung, C. & Wu, X. L. Swimming efficiency of bacterium Escherichia coli. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 103, 13712–13717 (2006).
Wang, W., Chiang, T.-Y., Velegol, D. & Mallouk, T. E. Understanding the efficiency of autonomous nano- and microscale motors. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 135, 10557–10565 (2013).
Shah, Z. H. et al. Highly efficient chemically-driven micromotors with controlled snowman-like morphology. Chem. Commun. 56, 15301–15304 (2020).
Zhang, L. et al. Characterizing the swimming properties of artificial bacterial flagella. Nano Lett. 9, 3663–3667 (2009).
Armstrong, M. J. & Hess, H. The ecology of technology and nanomotors. ACS Nano 8, 4070–4073 (2014).
Laskar, A., Shklyaev, O. E. & Balazs, A. C. Self-morphing, chemically driven gears and machines. Matter 4, 600–617 (2021).
Dey, K. K. et al. Micromotors powered by enzyme catalysis. Nano Lett. 15, 8311–8315 (2015).
Pavel, I.-A., Bunea, A.-I., David, S. & Gáspár, S. Nanorods with biocatalytically induced self-electrophoresis. ChemCatChem 6, 866–872 (2014).
Wilson, D. A., Nolte, R. J. M. & van Hest, J. C. M. Autonomous movement of platinum-loaded stomatocytes. Nat. Chem. 4, 268–274 (2012).
Paxton, W. F. et al. Catalytic nanomotors: autonomous movement of striped nanorods. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 126, 13424–13431 (2004).
Ma, X., Wang, X., Hahn, K. & Sánchez, S. Motion control of urea-powered biocompatible hollow microcapsules. ACS Nano 10, 3597–3605 (2016).
Kim, D., Liu, A., Diller, E. & Sitti, M. Chemotactic steering of bacteria propelled microbeads. Biomed. Microdevices 14, 1009–1017 (2012).
Sattayasamitsathit, S., Kaufmann, K., Galarnyk, M., Vazquez-Duhalt, R. & Wang, J. Dual-enzyme natural motors incorporating decontamination and propulsion capabilities. RSC Adv. 4, 27565–27570 (2014).
Mano, N. & Heller, A. Bioelectrochemical propulsion. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127, 11574–11575 (2005).
Cnossen, A., Kistemaker, J. C. M., Kojima, T. & Feringa, B. L. Structural dynamics of overcrowded alkene-based molecular motors during thermal isomerization. J. Org. Chem. 79, 927–935 (2014).
Solovev, A. A., Mei, Y., Bermúdez Ureña, E., Huang, G. & Schmidt, O. G. Catalytic microtubular jet engines self-propelled by accumulated gas bubbles. Small 5, 1688–1692 (2009).
Acknowledgements
Y.Z. acknowledges start-up funds from Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering at Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BAIC202103). H.H. acknowledges financial support from National Science Foundation Division of Materials Research (NSF-DMR) grant 1807514.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
All authors contributed equally to the preparation of the manuscript.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zhang, Y., Hess, H. Chemically-powered swimming and diffusion in the microscopic world. Nat Rev Chem 5, 500–510 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-021-00281-6
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-021-00281-6
- Springer Nature Limited
This article is cited by
-
Nanoscale anisotropy for biomedical applications
Nature Reviews Bioengineering (2024)
-
Multi-functional Hollow Structures for Intelligent Drug Delivery
Chemical Research in Chinese Universities (2024)
-
Mechanochemical feedback loop drives persistent motion of liposomes
Nature Physics (2023)
-
Dual enzyme-powered chemotactic cross β amyloid based functional nanomotors
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Emergent microrobotic oscillators via asymmetry-induced order
Nature Communications (2022)