Graphene oxide induced enhancement of light-driven micromotor with biocompatible fuels

Abstract A highly efficient light-driven cuprous oxide @ graphene oxide (Cu2O@GO) micromotor which can be propelled with various biocompatible fuels is described. The Cu2O@GO micromotors, which achieve enhanced photocatalytic performance by doping Cu2O with GO, can be efficiently propelled by visible light and even near infrared light. Compared with conventional plain Cu2O micromotors, which can only be driven by visible light, the Cu2O@GO micromotors show more than 3 times faster speeds under the full range of visible light with biocompatible glucose fuel. In addition, due to the GO-induced enhanced photocatalytic performance and local photoinduced thermal effects, such motors can be powered by NIR with a series of biocompatible fuels, such as glucose, leucine, and urea solutions, with speeds reaching up to 11.39 µm s−1 (in glucose), which extends the excitation wavelength of photocatalytic micromotors to near-infrared light. This novel strategy of improving the performance of light-driven micromotors via GO doping has opened up a new and attractive path for the preparation of micromotors with potential applications in biological environments.