Reported by: Ji Xuan
Translated by: Qin Jialu
Edited by: Daniel Penistone
Recently, Professor He Qiang’s Group from HIT, School of Fundamental and Interdisciplinary Science, Micro/Nanotechnology Research Center synthesized the first under 100 nm, near infrared light-powered janus mesoporous silica nanoparticle motors (JMSNMs) internationally. Because the janus mesoporous silica nanoparticles have high cargo-loading capacity, the fuel-free, nanoparticle motors have potential in the design of new-generation drug-delivery vehicles. This new research achievement Near Infrared Light-Powered Janus Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticle Motors has been published in the internationally renowned journal Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS, impact factor is 12.113).
In many Sci-Fi novels and movies, people often imagine that various nano-machines can move in the blood freely and complete targeted drug-delivery, atherosclerosis treatment, blood clot removal, wound cleaning and other biomedical applications. For half a century, scientists have been actively exploring and managing to turn this imaginative idea into reality. Scientists have invented a variety of self-driving artificial nano-machines which are powered by chemical fuels, but the chemical fuels which these artificial nano-machines use have severe side effects to living things, and their sizes are all over a few hundred nanometers which limits their application in biomedical field especially in targeted drug-delivery.
Professor He Qiang’s team have made the latest breakthroughs based on the earlier self-driven nano motors on this problem. The results show that the JMSNMs can move at 950 body lengths/s for 50 nm in the water under an NIR laser power. The move speed depends on the light power of the NIR laser, and the reversible “on/off” motion of the JMSNMs can be conveniently modulated by a remote NIR laser. Experiments and calculation have proven that the movement mechanism of the nano-motors attributes to the generated photo-thermal effect on the gold silica nano-shells under the NIR laser power and forms a local temperature gradient on the surface of the mesoporous silica (that is self-thermophoresis). Making use of the self-thermophoresis forces could effectively overcome the effect of the force from the surrounding water to the nano motors (that is Brownian motion).
This project was supported by our school’s State Key Laboratory of Robotics and Systems and was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation Committee.
Article link：http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacs.6b00902
