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The possibilities a 3D fish can open up!

Nano engineers are running a proof of concept by using 3D fish

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Sonal Desai
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D fish

MUMBAI, INDIA: Young Nano engineers, with newer discoveries are helping us lead better lives.

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Nano engineers at the University of California, San Diego, are running a proof of concept by using multi-purpose fish-shaped micro robots, called microfish that swim around efficiently in liquids.

They used an innovative 3D printing technology for the purpose.

The possibilities the technology can open up:

According to a press release listed on Eureka Alerts, the microfish will inspire a new generation of smart micro robots that have diverse capabilities such as detoxification, sensing and directed drug delivery.

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The researchers led by Professors Shaochen Chen and Joseph Wang, installed platinum nanoparticles in the tails which react with hydrogen peroxide to propel the microfish forward, and magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles in the heads which allowed them to be steered with magnets.

"We have developed an entirely new method to engineer nature-inspired microscopic swimmers that have complex geometric structures and are smaller than the width of a human hair. With this method, we can easily integrate different functions inside these swimmers for a broad spectrum of applications," said the co-first author Wei Zhu, a Nano engineering Ph.D. student in Chen's research group at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego.

"Another exciting possibility we could explore is to encapsulate medicines inside the microfish and use them for directed drug delivery," said Jinxing Li, the other co-first author of the study and a Nano engineering Ph.D. student in Wang's research group.

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How the technology works:

The new microfish fabrication method is based on a rapid, high-resolution 3D printing technology called micro scale continuous optical printing (μCOP), which was developed in Chen's lab.

Some of the benefits of the μCOP technology are speed, scalability, precision and flexibility. Within seconds, the researchers can print an array containing hundreds of microfish, each measuring 120 microns long and 30 microns thick. Because it is digitized, the researchers could experiment with different designs for their microfish, including shark and manta ray shapes.

The key component of the μCOP technology is a digital micro-mirror array device (DMD) chip, which contains approximately two million micro-mirrors. The microfish are built by using a photosensitive material and are constructed one layer at a time, allowing each set of functional nanoparticles to be printed into specific parts of the fish bodies.

"This method has made it easier for us to test different designs for these micro robots and to test different nanoparticles to insert new functional elements into these tiny structures. It's my personal hope to further this research to eventually develop surgical micro robots that operate safer and with more precision," said Li.

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