Deformation Simulation of Soft Spiral-Shaped Hydrogel Swimmers for Autonomous Swimming Control

Many of these microorganisms can change the morphology of their spiral-shaped flagella to control their motility. By mimicking these flagella system, soft spiral-shaped microswimmers for autonomous swimming controlled have been proposed. By patterning the stimuli-responsive hydrogel, the geometry of the microswimmer changes in response to the external stimuli, and thus the swimming velocity is also changed. However, a more detailed analysis of geometry change is essential for the determination of the suitable design and accurate propulsion control. Therefore, we analyzed the deformation behavior in detail. We revealed that the pattern angle is an important parameter for acceleration/deceleration of the microswimmer.