Knudsen-pump-based micro-hovercrafts

We introduce polymer-membrane micro-hovercrafts which utilize incident light to generate the lift force.The light is absorbed by a carbon nanotube layer on one side of the membrane resulting in a temperature gradient along the thickness of the membrane, which in turn pumps air under the membrane via the mechanism of thermal transpiration.The hovercrafts float over a substrate at heights of ~50 m, which agrees with the predictions of our theoretical model.