English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Book Chapter

Chapter 2: Nanoscale robotic agents in biological fluids and tissues

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons75462

Fischer,  Peer       
Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

Link
(Any fulltext)

Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)
There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe
Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Palagi, S., Walker, D., Qiu, T., & Fischer, P. (2018). Chapter 2: Nanoscale robotic agents in biological fluids and tissues. In J. P. Desai (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Medical Robotics (pp. 19-42). New Jersey [u.a.]: World Scientific.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000B-2655-B
Abstract
Nanorobots are untethered structures of sub-micron size that can be controlled in a non-trivial way. Such nanoscale robotic agents are envisioned to revolutionize medicine by enabling minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. To be useful, nanorobots must be operated in complex biological fluids and tissues, which are often difficult to penetrate. In this chapter, we first discuss potential medical applications of motile nanorobots. We briefly present the challenges related to swimming at such small scales and we survey the rheological properties of some biological fluids and tissues. We then review recent experimental results in the development of nanorobots and in particular their design, fabrication, actuation, and propulsion in complex biological fluids and tissues. Recent work shows that their nanoscale dimension is a clear asset for operation in biological tissues, since many biological tissues consist of networks of macromolecules that prevent the passage of larger micron-scale structures, but contain dynamic pores through which nanorobots can move.