The pH Taxis of an Intelligent Catalytic Microbot

1. Krishna Kanti Dey², 
2. Satyapriya Bhandari¹,
3. Dipankar Bandyopadhyay^2,3, 
4. Saurabh Basu⁴, 
5. Arun Chattopadhyay^1,2,*

Article first published online: 14 JAN 2013

DOI: 10.1002/smll.201202312

A Pd nanoparticle-containing polymer microsphere moves with increasing speed across a pH gradient, following differential catalytic decomposition of aqueous hydrogen peroxide. The directional motion is akin to the pH taxis of living microorganisms. The artificial pH taxis exhibits random walk, translation, vertical, hopping, and pulsed motion, when the size of the motor and the imposed pH gradient are modulated