Photopatternable Magnetic Hollowbots by Nd-Fe-B Nanocomposite for Potential Targeted Drug Delivery Applications

• Published in: Micromachines (Basel) Vol. 9; no. 4; p. 182
• Main Authors: Li, Hui, Chen, Jing, Zhang, Jinjie, Zhang, Jingyong, Zhao, Guoru, Wang, Lei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 13.04.2018; MDPI
• Subjects: Actuation; Communication; Dendrimers; drug delivery; Drug delivery systems; Equipment costs; hollowbots; Iron; Liposomes; magnetic composite; microfabrication; Microfluidics; Microrobots; Nanocomposites; Neodymium; photopatternable; Shelf life; microfabrication; photopatternable; drug delivery; magnetic composite; hollowbots
• ISSN: 2072-666X; 2072-666X
• DOI: 10.3390/mi9040182

In contrast to traditional drug administration, targeted drug delivery can prolong, localize, target and have a protected drug interaction with the diseased tissue. Drug delivery carriers, such as polymeric micelles, liposomes, dendrimers, nanotubes, and so on, are hard to scale-up, costly, and have short shelf life. Here we show the novel fabrication and characterization of photopatternable magnetic hollow microrobots that can potentially be utilized in microfluidics and drug delivery applications. These magnetic hollowbots can be fabricated using standard ultraviolet (UV) lithography with low cost and easily accessible equipment, which results in them being easy to scale up, and inexpensive to fabricate. Contact-free actuation of freestanding magnetic hollowbots were demonstrated by using an applied 900 G external magnetic field to achieve the movement control in an aqueous environment. According to the movement clip, the average speed of the magnetic hollowbots was estimated to be 1.9 mm/s.