Floatable Syntactic Magnesium Foam as a Marangoni-Induced Propulsion Microboat
Gyorgy Thalmaier, Niculina Argentina Sechel, Ioan Vida-Simiti · 2025
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Description
A magnesium foam light enough to float can also swim, if chemistry pushes it. Gyorgy Thalmaier, Niculina Argentina Sechel, and Ioan Vida-Simiti build such a foam in 2025 from fine magnesium powder with expanded perlite as the pore maker. Pressing and vacuum sintering yield disks as light as 0.9 grams per cubic centimeter, strong enough to machine into a tiny boat. The swimmer moves by the Marangoni effect, where a surface tension difference pulls it along.
A drop of ethanol mix at the stern creates that pull. The boats reach about 160 millimeters per second and travel over 350 millimeters on a four-microliter sip. The authors present the foam as both a light structural material and a self-propelled microswimmer.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Gyorgy Thalmaier, Niculina Argentina Sechel, Ioan Vida-Simiti |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 28 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |