ArticleNature communications2021
Ultrasound-activated ciliary bands for microrobotic systems inspired by starfish.
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 46 papers.
What it found
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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
46 citing papers in PubMed, 142 citations in OpenAlex.
- Microrobots for Precision Diagnosis and Treatment in the Digestive System: A Review of Actuation Mechanisms, Structural Design, Preclinical and Translational Applications.Micromachines · 2026Review
- An artificial cilia-based array system for sound frequency decoding and resonance-responsive drug release.Nature biomedical engineering · 2026Article
- Bioinspired milliscale near-boundary undulatory motion for fluid transport and adhesive locomotion.Science advances · 2026Article
- Machine learning-driven design of engineered cilia enables hybrid operations in acoustic microrobots.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Reconfigurable Acoustofluidic Microvortices for Selective Microcargo Delivery.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Acoustic shape-morphing micromachines.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Ultrasound-driven programmable artificial muscles.Nature · 2025Article
- Acoustically powered micro-clampbot for single-particle transportation.Science advances · 2025Article
- Magnetic Cilia with Programmable Beating Patterns for Vortex-Driven Mixing in Microfluidics.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2025Article
- The Morphological, Behavioral, and Transcriptomic Life Cycle of Anthrobots.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Acoustic technologies for the orchestration of cellular functions for therapeutic applications.Science advances · 2025Review
- Technology Roadmap of Micro/Nanorobots.ACS nano · 2025Review
- Reconfigurable robust microrobot collectives with large force output enabled by gradient magnetic fields.Science advances · 2025Article
- Micro- and Nano-Bots for Infection Control.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2025Review
- Ultrasound-activated cilia for biofilm control in indwelling medical devices.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Topological acoustofluidics.Nature materials · 2025Article
- Emerging Wearable Acoustic Sensing Technologies.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Review
- Model-based reinforcement learning for ultrasound-driven autonomous microrobots.Nature machine intelligence · 2025Article
- Swarm Autonomy: From Agent Functionalization to Machine Intelligence.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cilia are short, hair-like appendages ubiquitous in various biological systems, which have evolved to manipulate and gather food in liquids at regimes where viscosity dominates inertia. Inspired by these natural systems, synthetic cilia have been developed and utilized in microfluidics and microrobotics to achieve functionalities such as propulsion, liquid pumping and mixing, and particle manipulation. Here, we demonstrate ultrasound-activated synthetic ciliary bands that mimic the natural arrangements of ciliary bands on the surface of starfish larva. Our system leverages nonlinear acoustics at microscales to drive bulk fluid motion via acoustically actuated small-amplitude oscillations of synthetic cilia. By arranging the planar ciliary bands angled towards (+) or away (-) from each other, we achieve bulk fluid motion akin to a flow source or sink. We further combine these flow characteristics with a physical principle to circumvent the scallop theorem and realize acoustic-based propulsion at microscales. Finally, inspired by the feeding mechanism of a starfish larva, we demonstrate an analogous microparticle trap by arranging + and - ciliary bands adjacent to each other.
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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.