Self-propelling micro swimmer with controllable motion

Self-propelling swimmers are machines that can propel itself in a designed direction, in the water or on a surface, without an external guide or energy source. Researches on the self-propelling swimmer demonstrated great potential for the various application such as drug delivery, environmental cleansing, and self-assembly.[1] However, previously introduced swimmers has limitation in the complexity in motion and size. Electric swimmers has limitation in lowering scale, and nano-scale machine that based on the chemical reaction only showed un-controlled motion in absence of the external guide. Here, we propose the micro scale self-propelling swimmers that utilizing the Marangoni effect. By introducing novel micro-fabrication methods that enables both precise controlling of shape and its chemical composition, we demonstrated micro scale machines that could swim on the surface of water with programmed motion.