Water contaminated with heavy metals such as lead poses huge risks to public health and ecosystems. Tiny, self-propelled bots may be just what we need to clean up our act. Amy Middleton reports.
A swarm of tiny, self-propelling robots can clean heavy metals from contaminated water, a new study has revealed.
Industries such as mining and technology manufacturing can
pollute water with metals such as lead, arsenic and mercury. This can
have consequences for the ecosystem, including flora and fauna, as well
as wider public health ramifications.
Now, researchers in Germany, Spain and Singapore have
developed microbots to begin undoing this process – with each bot
thinner than a human hair.
The machines are multi-functional: they propel themselves
through water, extracting particles of lead as they go. According to the
paper, published in Nano Letters, the bots effectively remove 95% of lead from contaminated water in one hour using their multi-tiered approach.
The outer layer of their tube-like structure is made of
graphene oxide, which absorbs lead from water. The middle layer, made of
nickel, means each robot can be controlled by a magnetic field.
The inner layer is platinum which, when combined with hydrogen peroxide, creates microbubbles and propels the robot forward.
This system has resulted in a series of self-propelling,
itty-bitty robots which extract and capture particles of lead, before
being sucked out of the water by a magnetic field.
The robots can be treated with acid to remove the lead,
and there is an added sustainability bonus: the removed lead can then be
recycled, and the robots themselves can be used multiple times once
they've been cleared of their cargo.
Although this study focuses on lead, the research, led by
Diana Vilela at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in
Stuttgart, Germany, may have wider applications.
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