Transportation of Nano/Microparticles via Photoinduced Crawling of Azobenzene Crystals

The stimulus-driven motion of microscale objects on solid surfaces is a promising process to realize the manipulation microdroplets, which has applications in fields areas such as material accumulation and sensing at micro level. Light an effective external stimulus for object because it can provide contactless spatial temporal control. In this study, new method devised transport nano/micromaterials glass surface by exploiting photoinduced crawling crystals. 4-(methylamino)azobenzene (4-MAAB) crystals are used via photoirradiation from single visible-light source without using expensive equipment lasers positioning devices. Nano/micromaterials mixed with 4-MAAB successfully transported nano/micromaterial tracked fluorescence embedded into situ time-resolved X-ray diffraction measurements also conducted mechanistic analysis. This study offers development paths microfluidics microrobotics.