Design and fabrication of micro/nano-motors for environmental and sensing applications

Abstract Small-scale synthetic micro/nano-motors (MNMs) are at the forefront of scientific and technological development, which may help to resolve the long-standing and pressing issues in environmental repairs and analytical chemistry fields. Researchers develop MNMs as innovative tools to handle environmental problems with improved remediation performance than conventional methods. The self-motile platforms introduce more mass transfer and enhanced micro-mixing, resulting in rapid and highly effective remediation outcomes. Moreover, the motion-based analytical platforms provide excellent tools based on direct optical microscope observations or through the combination with diverse analytical instruments. In this review, we briefly summarized the major design strategies of MNMs concerning their elementary physics, propelling mechanisms, fabrication techniques, and materials choices. The progress of MNMs in environmental remediation and analysis fields are comprehensively discussed, considering the types of clean-up mechanisms, contaminants, and analytical methods. We discussed the prospects and challenges regarding the practical and the potential large-scale applications of the MNMs-based environmental clean-up strategies and analytical sensing applications.