Washington: The Hybrid”eBiobotsare the first to combine soft materials, living muscle and microelectronics, said researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern Universityand collaborating institutions. They described their centimeter-scale biological machines in the journal Science Robotics.
“The integration of microelectronics allows the fusion of the biological world and the world of electronics, both with many advantages of their own, to now produce these electronic biobots and machines that could be useful for many medical, sensing and environmental applications in the future.” , said. study co-leader Rashid BashirIllinois professor of bioengineering and dean of Grainger’s College of Engineering.
BashirThe group has pioneered the development of biobots, small biological robots powered by mouse muscle tissue that grows on a 3D-printed soft polymer skeleton. They demonstrated walking biobots in 2012 and light-activated biobots in 2016. Light activation gave the researchers some control, but practical applications were limited by the question of how to deliver the light pulses to the biobots outside of a light environment. laboratory.
The answer to that question came from Northwestern University professor John A. Rogers, a pioneer in flexible bioelectronics, whose team helped integrate tiny wireless microelectronics and battery-free micro-LEDs. This allowed the researchers to remotely control the eBiobots.
“This unusual combination of technology and biology opens up great opportunities in creating self-healing, learning, evolving, communication, and self-organizing engineering systems. We believe it is very fertile ground for future research with specific potential applications in biomedicine and environmental monitoring.” said Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering and neurological surgery at Northwestern University and director of the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics.
To give the biobots the necessary freedom of movement for practical applications, the researchers set out to eliminate bulky batteries and connecting cables. The eBiobots use a pickup coil to harvest power and provide a regulated output voltage to power the micro-LEDs, said co-author Zhengwei Li, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Houston.
The researchers can send a wireless signal to the eBiobots that causes the LEDs to blink. The LEDs stimulate the light-sensitive engineered muscle to contract, moving the polymer legs so the machines “walk.” The micro-LEDs are so focused that they can activate specific parts of the muscle, causing the eBiobot to rotate in the desired direction.
The researchers used computational modeling to optimize the eBiobot design and component integration for robustness, speed, and maneuverability. Illinois professor of mechanical sciences and engineering Mattia Gazzola led the simulation and design of the eBiobots.
Iterative design and additive 3D printing of the scaffolds enabled rapid cycles of experiments and performance improvements, said Gazzola and co-author Xiaotian Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher in Gazzola’s lab.
The design allows for the possible future integration of additional microelectronics, such as chemical and biological sensors, or 3D-printed scaffolding pieces for functions like pushing or carrying things the biobots encounter, said co-author Youngdeok Kim, who completed the work as a college student. Graduate in Illinois.
Integrating electronic sensors or biological neurons would allow eBiobots to detect and respond to toxins in the environment, disease biomarkers and more, the researchers said.
“By developing a first hybrid bioelectronic robot, we are opening the door to a new paradigm of applications for healthcare innovation, such as in situ biopsies and analysis, minimally invasive surgery, or even cancer detection within the human body,” Li said. saying.
The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health supported this work.
