NanOswimmers for Medicine And Diagnosis – NOMAD

We propose micro/nanoswimmers embedded lab-on-a-chip devices.
The proposed micro/nanoswimmers will have the functions of efficient and controlled remote propulsions, wireless triggered physical manipulations such as tweezing. Finally we will demonstrate the colloidal cargo transport between microfluidic channels by the proposed micro/nanoswimmers.

- Fastest 3-D helical nanobelts (HNBs) swimmers (24 times body length per second).
- Fastest microswimmer (3.6 ms in 2 mm dash test, previous world record 15 ms).
- Wireless colloidal cargo transport triggered by rotating frequency of microswimmer
- Large range wireless manipulator by microswimmer.
- Microfluidic mixers and pumps powered by microswimmers.

The developed micro/nanoswimmers are promising as,
- Mobile physical manipulator in lab-on-a-chip
- Drug delivery vehicle

3 International Journal papers (Int. J. Robotics Research, IEEE Trans. Robotics and Automation, IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine) and 8 International peer reviewed conference proceedings (IEEE ICRA 2012, MNE 2011, IEEE-NEMS 2012, MicroTas 2012 including the submitted paper)

Microswimmers have the potential to revolutionize many aspects of medicine. These wirelessly controlled and powered mobile devices will make existing therapeutic and diagnostic procedures less invasive and will also enable new procedures which were not possible before. In this proposal, radio controlled microswimmers as colloidal cargo transport vehicle inside microfluidic device are proposed for biomedical applications such as
targeted drug delivery and hyperthermia. This proposal aims to develop two important aspects of microswimmers and will show their feasibility toward
their future medical applications. First, highly motile microswimmers to be able to swim through bodily fluids and to perform in vivo therapy are crucial features and also major challenges. Therefore bioinspired microswimmers which are efficient to swim in low-Reynolds number liquid
environment are created from the III-V micro/nanotechnologies. The proposed design of the microswimmers is to enhance the swimming performance by optimizing the parameters of electrokinetic effect and hydrodynamic function. The newly designed microswimmers with high motility
will be characterized inside microfluidic testbed. In addition to the swimming performance, it is inevitable to have the ability to interact with physical environment by remote commands. To test their feasibility of biomanipulation tasks such as targeted therapy like drug delivery, the microswimmers will have the ability to fill and release colloids by remote command via radio frequency. Finally the developed microswimmers will be tested inside microfluidic device to demonstrate colloidal cargo transport that can simulate in vivo drug delivery. The proposed development will prove the radio controlled drug delivery by microswimmers that can open their applications for in vivo biomedical therapy or lab-on-a-chip diagnosis.