Magnetically driven photonic ‘microbots’

Abstract

Now, Conrad Smart, Tanner Pearson, and colleagues at Cornell University have demonstrated a type of diffractive micro-optical device that is magnetically programmable and manoeuvrable (Science 386, 1031–1037; 2024).

The structures, fabricated by using deep-ultraviolet lithography and electron beam lithography, along with various deposition and etching techniques, are composed of elements that span length scales ranging from millimetre to nanometre, in order to access mechanical, diffractive, and magnetic features. The authors propose the devices as magnetically controlled microscopic robots, or ‘microbots’.