Researchers may have discovered a way to create vehicles and other vessels that can move with only light as a fuel source.
In order to make the discovery the team looked at polymers that "snap" when light hits them, a University of Pittsburgh news release reported.
The snapping motion makes mechanical energy, which could possibly be used as a way to naturally power vehicles and other electronics.
"I like to compare this action to that of a Venus flytrap," M. Ravi Shankar, lead author of the study and associate professor of industrial engineering in the University's Swanson School of Engineering, said. "The underlying mechanism that allows the Venus flytrap to capture prey is slow. But because its internal structure is coupled to use elastic instability, a snapping action occurs, and this delivers the power to shut the trap quickly. A similar mechanism acts in the beak of the Hummingbird to help snap-up insects"
Shankar and colleagues looked at the elastic instability of certain polymeric materials and found they possessed "unprecedented actuation rates and output powers."
The team found they could use a laser pointer to generate surprising amounts of energy from the polymers.
In the future the team believes they could program the polymers by exposing them to different types and levels of light.
"As we look to real-world applications, you could activate a switch simply by shining light on it," Shankar said. "For example, you could develop soft machines such as stents or other biomedical devices that can be more adaptive and easily controlled. In a more complex mechanism, we could imagine a light-driven robotic or morphing structure, or microvehicles that would be more compact because you eliminate the need for an on-board power system. The work potential is built into the polymer itself and is triggered with light."
