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Medical devices: Soft micromachines run like clockwork

Nature Reviews Materials volume 2, Article number: 17002 (2017) Cite this article

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Conventional microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are constructed from non-biocompatible materials. Although there is great promise in the use of micromachines in medicine, this is currently held back by the manufacturing challenge of creating biocompatible and remotely controlled devices. “We saw a large opportunity to build a new class of implantable devices if these manufacturing challenges could be solved. Because biological materials are soft, they cannot be processed in the same way as silicon or metal, and so we had to develop new manufacturing techniques,” explains Samuel Sia, who led the study.

The new technique produced intricate 3D structures with movable components made from polyethylene glycol-based hydrogels. “We have developed a method to make very small devices not from silicon or metal, but from biological materials,” says Sia, whose group has previously worked on the microscale patterning of biomaterials, but until now was not able form complex 3D devices. This development also represents an advance over existing 3D printing technologies, which can produce microstructured biomaterials, although not with moving parts as required for MEMS.

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References

  1. Chin S. Y. et al. Additive manufacturing of hydrogel-based materials for next-generation implantable medical devices. Science Robotics http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.aah6451 (2017)

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Authors
  1. Adam Brotchie
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Brotchie, A. Medical devices: Soft micromachines run like clockwork. Nat Rev Mater 2, 17002 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/natrevmats.2017.2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/natrevmats.2017.2

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