Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA.
Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA.
Mater Horiz. 2022 Oct 31;9(11):2863-2871. doi: 10.1039/d2mh00695b.
The recent global outbreaks of epidemics and pandemics have shown us that we are severely under-prepared to cope with infectious agents. Exposure to infectious agents present in biofluids (, blood, saliva, urine ) poses a severe risk to clinical laboratory personnel and healthcare workers, resulting in hundreds of millions of hospital-acquired and laboratory-acquired infections annually. Novel technologies that can minimize human exposure through remote and automated handling of infectious biofluids will mitigate such risk. In this work, we present biofluid manipulators, which allow on-demand, remote and lossless manipulation of virtually any liquid droplet. Our manipulators are designed by integrating thermo-responsive soft actuators with superomniphobic surfaces. Utilizing our manipulators, we demonstrate on-demand, remote and lossless manipulation of biofluid droplets. We envision that our biofluid manipulators will not only reduce manual operations and minimize exposure to infectious agents, but also pave the way for developing inexpensive, simple and portable robotic systems, which can allow point-of-care operations, particularly in developing nations.
最近全球爆发的传染病和大流行病向我们表明，我们在应对传染病原体方面准备严重不足。接触生物体液（如血液、唾液、尿液）中存在的传染病原体对临床实验室人员和医护人员构成严重威胁，每年导致数亿例医院获得性和实验室获得性感染。能够通过远程和自动化处理传染性生物体液来最大限度减少人员接触的新技术将降低此类风险。在这项工作中，我们提出了生物流体操纵器，它可以按需、远程且无损地操纵几乎任何液滴。我们的操纵器是通过将热敏软致动器与超疏液表面集成而设计的。利用我们的操纵器，我们演示了对生物流体液滴的按需、远程和无损操纵。我们设想，我们的生物流体操纵器不仅将减少手动操作并最大限度地减少对传染病原体的暴露，还将为开发廉价、简单和便携式机器人系统铺平道路，这些系统可以实现即时护理操作，特别是在发展中国家。
