A team of University of Waterloo Engineering researchers has created smart, advanced materials that will be the building blocks for a future generation of soft medical microrobots.
Led by Dr. Hamed Shahsavan, a chemical engineering professor, the research team has developed tiny robots that have the potential to conduct medical procedures, such as biopsy, and cell and tissue transport, in a minimally invasive fashion.
The tiny soft robots are a maximum of one centimetre long and are bio-compatible and non-toxic. The robots are made of advanced hydrogel composites that include sustainable cellulose nanoparticles derived from plants.
The hydrogel used in this work changes its shape when exposed to external chemical stimulation. The ability to orient cellulose nanoparticles at will enables researchers to program such shape-change, which is crucial for the fabrication of functional soft robots.
"In my research group, we are bridging the old and new," said Shahsavan, director of the Smart Materials for Advanced Robotic Technologies (SMART-Lab). "We introduce emerging microrobots by leveraging traditional soft matter like hydrogels, liquid crystals, and colloids."
The other unique component of this advanced smart material is that it is self-healing, which allows for programming a wide range in the shape of the robots. Researchers can cut the material and paste it back together without using glue or other adhesives to form different shapes for different procedures.
The next step in this research is to scale the robot down to submillimeter scales.
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