MIT Researchers Develop Microscopic Robots Light Enough to Float in Air

Microscopic devices such as nanobots have huge potential in a wide variety of applications, and this breakthrough from researchers at MIT is an important stepping stone on the way to that reality. Their development puts microscopic electronic circuits onto to tiny colloid particles, which are light enough to float suspended in liquid and even air. The entire miniature devices are about the size of a human egg cell, and could be used in everything from biomedical to gas-detection sensors.

That’s possible because they utilized a new technique for fabricating the circuits. IC (integrated circuit) manufacturing technology has, for many years now, been advanced enough to create microscopic electronics—modern processors can have a hundred million transistors per square millimeter. But, at these scales, the substrate the circuit is placed on dramatically increases the weight and bulk of a usable device. In order to avoid those complications associated with traditional chips, the MIT researchers had to come up with an unconventional substrate.

That ended up being the surface of colloids, which are particles small enough to remain in a suspension indefinitely. The colloids provide the rigidity necessary to support graphene and transition-metal dichalcogenides circuits, but don’t have the weight or size of traditional substrates. The completed circuits have logic and memory, and receive power from a simple photodiode. They could potentially be used for environmental sensing, or biomedical monitoring inside of the body.