Ghosh Arijit, Ghosh Ambarish
Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.
Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.
Trans Indian Natl Acad Eng. 2021 Jun;6:429-438. doi: 10.1007/s41403-021-00212-3. Epub 2021 Mar 7.
Artificial micro/nanomachines have been envisioned and demonstrated as potential candidates for targeted drug or gene delivery, cell manipulation, environmental and biological sensing and in lab on chip applications. Here, we have used helical nanomachines to measure the local rheological properties of a viscoelastic media. The position of the helical nanomachine/ nanopropeller was controlled precisely using magnetic fields with simultaneous measurements of the mechanical properties of a complex and heterogeneous fluidic environment. We demonstrated that the motion of the helical nanopropeller is extremely sensitive to fluid elasticity and the speed of propulsion of the nanopropeller can be used as a measure of the local elastic relaxation time. Taken together, we report a promising new technique of mapping the rheological properties by helical nanopropellers with very high spatial and temporal resolutions, with performance superior to existing techniques of passive or active microrheology.
人工微纳机器已被设想并证明是靶向药物或基因递送、细胞操纵、环境与生物传感以及芯片实验室应用的潜在候选者。在此，我们利用螺旋纳米机器来测量粘弹性介质的局部流变特性。通过磁场精确控制螺旋纳米机器/纳米推进器的位置，同时测量复杂且非均匀流体环境的力学性能。我们证明，螺旋纳米推进器的运动对流体弹性极为敏感，纳米推进器的推进速度可作为局部弹性弛豫时间的一种度量。综上所述，我们报道了一种极具前景的新技术，即通过螺旋纳米推进器以非常高的空间和时间分辨率绘制流变特性图，其性能优于现有的被动或主动微流变技术。
