Harvesting energy from the environment would be an important advantage for mobile micro- and nano-agents. Nature’s bacteria are mainly powered by chemical energy conversion due to chemotaxis. Recent developments of in vivo biomedical nanorobots raise much interest in the discovery of new and efficient wireless power transfer methods and of controlled locomotion mechanisms. These devices would have many potential applications, such as targeting, diagnosing, and treating blood clots and cancer cells.

Few known mechanisms are able to propel such devices. This paper describes helical nanobelt swimmers that are actuated by an electric field-generated electro-osmotic force and designed with a head and tail, similar to natural bacteria and their flagella. These microscopic artificial swimming objects have an efficient energy conversion mechanism that can easily overcome the viscous drag and gravitational forces in an aqueous environment at low Reynolds numbers.

The dielectric polymer coating showed better swimming performance compared with metallic or semiconductor surfaces. For realization of complex tasks for biomedical and micro- and nano-electrical mechanical system applications, it would be necessary to improve the control schemes for wireless liquid manipulators through enhanced hydrodynamic finite element model simulations. As soon as an effective facility for the propulsion of nano-robots is realized,it will be of significant interest for the development of some types of intelligent systems.