Tiny robots equipped with valves, motors, pumps, and storage space could one day be implanted in the body and deliver drugs through a remote control.
Led by Samuel Sia, a biomedical engineering professor at Columbia Univ., a team of researchers has developed an additive manufacturing process to build biomaterial-based implantable microelectromechanical systems (iMEMS) with freely moving parts that can be wirelessly controlled.
Existing implantable microdevices contain static parts and batteries or other toxic electronics that are not biocompatible. Sia’s team worked for more than eight years to develop a hydrogel-based alternative that addresses several challenges, including how to power small robotic devices without using toxic batteries, how to make small biocompatible moveable components without silicon, and how to enable the devices, once implanted, to communicate wirelessly.
“Hydrogels are difficult to work with, as they are soft and not compatible with traditional machining techniques,” says Sau...
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