In a cooperation between the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) scientists have developed microscopic “nanoswimmers” that can penetrate blood and even thicker liquids that exist within the body, something that corkscrews modeled on bacterial flagella have been disappointingly bad at. The tiny devices are made of three connected chains, one made of a polymer and two consisting of nanowires that can be influenced by an external magnetic field to flap in a given direction. This allows the system to control the direction in which the nanoswimmers are moving, so any on-board cargo such as drugs or some sort of nanoparticles can be precisely placed inside a tumor, for example.
From the study abstract in journal Nano Letters:
This work demonstrates for the first time planar undulations of composite multilink nanowire-based chains (diameter 200 nm) induced by a planar-oscillating magnetic field. Those chains comprise an elastic eukaryote-like polypyrrole tail and rigid magnetic nickel links connected by flexible polymer bilayer hinges. The multilink design exhibits a high swimming efficiency. Furthermore, the manufacturing process enables tuning the geometrical and material properties to specific applications.
Study in Nano Letters: Undulatory Locomotion of Magnetic Multilink Nanoswimmers…
Source: American Chemical Society…