Qiu Tian, Palagi Stefano, Fischer Peer
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2015 Aug;2015:4922-5. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2015.7319496.
Microscopic artificial swimmers hold the potential to enable novel non-invasive medical procedures. In order to ease their translation towards real biomedical applications, simpler designs as well as cheaper yet more reliable materials and fabrication processes should be adopted, provided that the functionality of the microrobots can be kept. A simple single-hinge design could already enable micro-swimming in non-Newtonian fluids, which most bodily fluids are. Here, we address the fabrication of such single-hinge microrobots with a 3D-printed soft material. Firstly, a finite element model is developed to investigate the deformability of the 3D-printed microstructure under typical values of the actuating magnetic fields. Then the microstructures are fabricated by direct 3D-printing of a soft material and their swimming performances are evaluated. The speeds achieved with the 3D-printed microrobots are comparable to those obtained in previous work with complex fabrication procedures, thus showing great promise for 3D-printed microrobots to be operated in biological fluids.
微观人工游动体具有实现新型非侵入性医疗程序的潜力。为了促进它们向实际生物医学应用的转化，应采用更简单的设计以及更便宜但更可靠的材料和制造工艺，前提是能保持微型机器人的功能。一个简单的单铰链设计就已经能够在非牛顿流体中实现微游动，而大多数体液都是非牛顿流体。在此，我们探讨用3D打印软材料制造这种单铰链微型机器人。首先，建立一个有限元模型来研究3D打印微结构在典型驱动磁场值下的可变形性。然后通过直接3D打印软材料来制造微结构，并评估它们的游动性能。3D打印微型机器人所达到的速度与先前采用复杂制造工艺的工作所获得的速度相当，因此显示出3D打印微型机器人在生物流体中运行的巨大潜力。
