Jellyfish-like robots could one day clean up the world’s oceans

27-Apr-2023 - Roboticists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have developed a jellyfish-inspired underwater robot with which they hope one day to collect waste from the bottom of the ocean. The almost noise-free prototype can trap objects underneath its body without physical ...

Microrobot collectives display versatile movement patterns

A model for future biomedical and environmental applications

28-Apr-2022 - Collective behavior and swarm patterns are found everywhere in nature. Robots can also be programmed to act in swarms. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS), Cornell University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have developed collectives of microrobots which can ...

Machine learning deployed to fast-track industrial optimization process

Minimization of defects in ALD passivation films with only two steps through Bayesian optimization

16-Dec-2021 - An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, the Technical University of Munich, and Robert Bosch GmbH deploy Bayesian Machine Learning methods to fast-track the optimization process of coating ...

World's first video recording of a space-time crystal

Periodic pattern consisting of magnons is formed at room temperature

10-Feb-2021 - A German-Polish research team has succeeded in creating a micrometer-sized space-time crystal consisting of magnons at room temperature. With the help of the scanning transmission X-ray microscope MAXYMUS at Bessy II at Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, they were able to film the recurring periodic ...

Solar-battery effect enables a new light-driven organic microswimmer to operate in the dark

30 seconds of illuminationis enough and the microswimmer has power for about half an hour

07-Oct-2020 - The propulsion resulting from external sources of energy makes microswimmers highly attractive, active devices that show great promise for potential applications in fields of biomedical and environmental technology. Targeted drug delivery in hard-to-reach areas of the body is one example. Another ...

Detecting the handedness of a single nanoparticle

New microscope-based spectrometer records both polarization states simultaneously and permitted the first observation of a dynamically moving single nanoparticle

11-Sep-2020 - Scientists from the Micro, Nano and Molecular Systems Lab at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems have developed a new spectroscopic-microscope, which can be used to observe a single nanoparticle in real time. This enabled the first detection of a nanoparticle’s handedness while it is ...

Self-healing soft material outsmarts nature

New stretchable material entirely recovers its structure and properties at the blink of an eye – and it can do this over and over again

30-Jul-2020 - A soft material that heals itself instantaneously is now reality. A team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and at Pennsylvania State University tune the nanostructure of a new stretchable material in such a way that it now entirely recovers its structure and ...

Super liquid-repellent dry adhesives

Scientists outsmart nature

30-Apr-2020 - A specific fibril tip shape design is the key to achieving elastic dry fibril adhesives with super liquid repellency. This new bioinspired material opens up many possibilities for use, as it prevents any form of liquid droplet or layer from hindering or degrading its adhesion. Stuttgart – ...

Serendipity in the research field of magnetism

Scientists discover new light-matter interaction with which they can write nanometer-sized magnetic structures

22-Apr-2020 - In cooperation with Chinese researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and others, German researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Stuttgart have for the first time ever created individual skyrmions in a magnetic layer using soft X-rays. In numerous ...

Novel approach to self-assembling mobile micromachines

27-Jun-2019 - Building a robot with many different components is a challenging task, even more so at the micro scale. Very convenient, if the parts self-assemble. The self-assembly of particles is nothing new. In fact, it has been achieved for decades. Magnetic particles interacting under rotating magnetic ...