RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 IRONSperm: Sperm-templated soft magnetic microrobots
JF Science Advances
JO Sci Adv
FD American Association for the Advancement of Science
SP eaba5855
DO 10.1126/sciadv.aba5855
VO 6
IS 28
A1 Magdanz, Veronika
A1 Khalil, Islam S. M.
A1 Simmchen, Juliane
A1 Furtado, Guilherme P.
A1 Mohanty, Sumit
A1 Gebauer, Johannes
A1 Xu, Haifeng
A1 Klingner, Anke
A1 Aziz, Azaam
A1 Medina-Sánchez, Mariana
A1 Schmidt, Oliver G.
A1 Misra, Sarthak
YR 2020
UL http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/28/eaba5855.abstract
AB We develop biohybrid magnetic microrobots by electrostatic self-assembly of nonmotile sperm cells and magnetic nanoparticles. Incorporating a biological entity into microrobots entails many functional advantages beyond shape templating, such as the facile uptake of chemotherapeutic agents to achieve targeted drug delivery. We present a single-step electrostatic self-assembly technique to fabricate IRONSperms, soft magnetic microswimmers that emulate the motion of motile sperm cells. Our experiments and theoretical predictions show that the swimming speed of IRONSperms exceeds 0.2 body length/s (6.8 ± 4.1 µm/s) at an actuation frequency of 8 Hz and precision angle of 45°. We demonstrate that the nanoparticle coating increases the acoustic impedance of the sperm cells and enables localization of clusters of IRONSperm using ultrasound feedback. We also confirm the biocompatibility and drug loading ability of these microrobots, and their promise as biocompatible, controllable, and detectable biohybrid tools for in vivo targeted therapy.