Shapeshifting Nanobots May Swim through Humans, Sperm-Sized Nanosubs May Attack Disease
Soft materials that can use magnetic fields to generate desired time-varying shapes could provide an engine for microswimmers
One day, microrobots may be able to swim through the human body like sperm or paramecia to carry out medical functions in specific locations. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have developed functional elastomers, which can be activated by magnetic fields to imitate the swimming gaits of natural flagella, cilia and jellyfish.
A sperm is equipped with a flagellum (tail-like extension), which can beat constantly back and forth to propel the sperm towards an egg. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have now enabled an extremely thin strip of silicone rubber, which is just a few millimetres in length, to achieve a very similar swimming pattern.
© Debora Schamel / MPI for Intelligent Systems
The crucial factor behind all of these movement processes is that different areas of the elastomer can react differently to an external magnetic field: some zones have to be attracted and others repelled. Otherwise, the elastomer would not be able to reshape into a wave or begin to roll up at its ends.
In order to enable different magnetic response along the elastomer, the researchers leveraged two key ideas: “Firstly, we varied the density of the magnetizable particles along the elastomer and secondly we also controlled the magnetization orientation of these particles,” explains Guo Zhan Lum, a scientist in the Department of Physical Intelligence at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart. The scientists controlled the local concentration of the particles during the fabrication process so that after the rubber has been exposed to a strong magnetic field, different parts of the rubber will possess different magnetic strength.
It is challenging to create different magnetization orientation for the particles as all the particles within a flat elastomer will have the same magnetization orientation after they have been exposed to a uniform magnetizing field. Hence, the scientists availed another trick: “By deforming the elastomer into a particular temporary shape during the magnetization process, we were able to control the final magnetization orientation of the individual magnetic particles very precisely,” explains Lum.
“One of the keys to the success of our work is that we succeeded in calculating the optimal magnetization profile and magnetic field for a desired movement pattern,” says Metin Sitti, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. To this end, he and his colleagues from the Institute’s Department of Physical Intelligence used a mathematical model to describe the physics of shape-programmable magnetic microrobots, and this model was also utilized to develop a corresponding computer algorithm – the very first of its kind. Scientists were previously reliant on intuition and could only estimate the required magnetic conditions.
This is not the only possible application the researchers can envisage in the area of microrobot locomotion. The fact that the shape of materials can be regulated and controlled via magnetic fields in mere fractions of a second could be of use in all applications that require the activation or mechanical steering of such devices in a small space.
Contacts and sources:
Professor Dr. Metin Sitti
Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart
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