Fabrication of three-lobed magnetic microrobots for cell transportation

Abstract

Mobile microrobots have the potential to transform medical treatments based on therapeutic delivery. Specifically, microrobots are promising candidates for cell transportation in cell-based therapies. Despite recent progress in cellular manipulation by microrobots, there is a significant need to design and fabricate microrobots to advance the field further. In this work, we present a facile approach to manufacturing three-lobed microrobots by a bench-top procedure. The microrobots are actuated by a harmless magnetic field which makes them biofriendly. Chemically, these microrobots are made of organosilica. The microrobots showed equally good control in both the open-loop and closed-loop settings. The three-lobed microrobots have two modes of motion during the open-loop control experiments. We employed these two modes for single-cell transportation. Our results show that the three-lobed microbots are very promising for cell transportation in a fluid.