ArticleNature communications2021
Symmetry breaking propulsion of magnetic microspheres in nonlinearly viscoelastic fluids.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- Aerogel-involved triple-state viscoelastic fluidic materials enable high-efficiency dual-purpose energy management.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Nano-/Microrobots for Environmental Remediation in the Eyes of Nanoarchitectonics: Toward Engineering on a Single-Atomic Scale.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Review
- The mismatch between experimental and computational fluid dynamics analyses for magnetic surface microrollers.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Navigation and Control of Motion Modes with Soft Microrobots at Low Reynolds Numbers.Micromachines · 2023Article
- Reduced rotational flows enable the translation of surface-rolling microrobots in confined spaces.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Spontaneous symmetry breaking propulsion of chemically coated magnetic microparticles.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Rolling Motion of a Soft Microsnowman under Rotating Magnetic Field.Micromachines · 2022Article
- Field-Induced Assembly and Propulsion of Colloids.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2022Article
- High shear rate propulsion of acoustic microrobots in complex biological fluids.Science advances · 2022Article
- Microporous hierarchically Zn-MOF as an efficient catalyst for the Hantzsch synthesis of polyhydroquinolines.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Flagellated Janus particles for multimodal actuation and transport.Biomicrofluidics · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Microscale propulsion impacts a diverse array of fields ranging from biology and ecology to health applications, such as infection, fertility, drug delivery, and microsurgery. However, propulsion in such viscous drag-dominated fluid environments is highly constrained, with time-reversal and geometric symmetries ruling out entire classes of propulsion. Here, we report the spontaneous symmetry-breaking propulsion of rotating spherical microparticles within non-Newtonian fluids. While symmetry analysis suggests that propulsion is not possible along the fore-aft directions, we demonstrate the existence of two equal and opposite propulsion states along the sphere's rotation axis. We propose and experimentally corroborate a propulsion mechanism for these spherical microparticles, the simplest microswimmers to date, arising from nonlinear viscoelastic effects in rotating flows similar to the rod-climbing effect. Similar possibilities of spontaneous symmetry-breaking could be used to circumvent other restrictions on propulsion, revising notions of microrobotic design and control, drug delivery, microscale pumping, and locomotion of microorganisms.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.