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American Association for the Advancement of Science, Research, (2020), 2020

DOI: 10.34133/2020/7659749

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Requirement and Development of Hydrogel Micromotors towards Biomedical Applications

Journal article published in 2020 by Xinyi Lin, Borui Xu ORCID, Hong Zhu, Jinrun Liu, Alexander Solovev ORCID, Yongfeng Mei ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

With controllable size, biocompatibility, porosity, injectability, responsivity, diffusion time, reaction, separation, permeation, and release of molecular species, hydrogel microparticles achieve multiple advantages over bulk hydrogels for specific biomedical procedures. Moreover, so far studies mostly concentrate on local responses of hydrogels to chemical and/or external stimuli, which significantly limit the scope of their applications. Tetherless micromotors are autonomous microdevices capable of converting local chemical energy or the energy of external fields into motive forces for self-propelled or externally powered/controlled motion. If hydrogels can be integrated with micromotors, their applicability can be significantly extended and can lead to fully controllable responsive chemomechanical biomicromachines. However, to achieve these challenging goals, biocompatibility, biodegradability, and motive mechanisms of hydrogel micromotors need to be simultaneously integrated. This review summarizes recent achievements in the field of micromotors and hydrogels and proposes next steps required for the development of hydrogel micromotors, which become increasingly important for in vivo and in vitro bioapplications.