Helical Nanomachines for Fast Mechanical Mapping of Heterogeneous Environments

Artificial micro and nano machines have been envisioned and demonstrated as potential candidates for variety of applications, ranging from targeted drug or gene delivery, cell manipulation, environmental sensing and many more. Here, we demonstrate the application of helical nanomachines that can measure and map the local rheological properties of a complex heterogeneous environment. The position of the helical nanomachine was controlled precisely using magnetic fields, while the instantaneous orientation provided an estimation of the viscosity of the surrounding medium with high spatial and temporal accuracy. Apart from providing viscosity estimates in purely viscous and viscoelastic media with shear rate independent viscosity (Boger fluids), their motion was also found to be extremely sensitive to fluid elasticity. Taken together we report a promising new technique of mapping the rheological properties of a complex fluidic environment by helical nanomachines with high spatial and temporal resolutions, a functionality that goes beyond the capabilities of existing passive and active microrheological methods.