In the 1966 science fiction movie "The Magic Journey", it depicts an exciting scene: a shrinking submarine can navigate the blood vessels of the human body and remove blood clots.
In July 1990, the first International Conference on Nanoscience and Technology was held in Baltimore, USA, marking the official birth of nanotechnology. The research on micro-nano robots has also begun and has been developing for 30 years. With the development of nanotechnology and micro-nano robotics, the above scenarios may become a reality in 10-20 years.
With the decades of development of micro-technology and nanotechnology, the scope of cognitive knowledge of micro-nano disciplines has gradually developed from initially referring to some micro-nano devices to all matter and systems involving the micro-nanoscale. micro-nano robot is an intertwined and precise discipline application. The corresponding carrier of is a highly cross-fusion of multiple disciplines and technologies such as electronics, machinery, materials, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, etc., and is also a complex engineering mechanical operating system structure.
At present, when the scientific research and industry are discussing micro-nano robots, they are actually discussing medical micro-nano robots/micro-nano machines. This is the most concentrated, most important and most potential application scenario for micro-nano robots.
From the root, microtechnology and nanotechnology are closely related to organisms and medical care. Cells and microorganisms are themselves microscopic substances. Micro-nano as a scale concept, robot/machine system as functional carrier, micro-nano medical robots provide new dimensions for the micro-scale measurement and research of humans in the medical field.
In addition, micro-nano robots are more epoch-making. From human tissues to single cells and single molecules, human research on organisms has entered the era of molecular-scale operation. medical micro-nano robots provide new perspectives and tools for humans to cross the era of medical operation from the micro-nanometer scale, laying the technical foundation and opening up new ideas for precision medicine in the 21st century to enter the next stage.
In this context, DeepTech officially released the "2022 Global Medical Micro-Nano Robot Technology Current Situation and Industrial Development Prospects Research Report". The DeepTech research team strives to outline the full picture of the definition of micro-Nano Robot Technology, technical principles, technological development history, current industrial development status, representative research teams, and challenges faced by industrialization through expert interviews, desktop research, and other methods.
The name of "micro-nano robot" is not accurate?
In a broad sense, a system that can perform motion and operation at the micro-nanoscale can be called a micro-nano robot, so it also has some more accurate names, such as micro-nano machines (Micro/Nanomachine), micro-nano motors (Micro/Nanomotor), etc. The names of
actually reflect different stages of research. Being called a "robot" means that it needs to have three abilities: feeling the outside world, making independent decisions, and making corresponding behaviors. Therefore, it is more accurate to call micro-nano machines at the current stage. The reason why people call it "robots" is because people are accustomed to using similar and familiar descriptions from the past to describe new things, and this also includes people's beautiful expectations.
The term "micro-nano robot" represents its future "intelligent" development direction: make decisions based on the specific environment in the body. In a 2015 Israeli study, this trend has begun to emerge. The robots developed can detect mutations in DNA or proteins. Once they meet the preset disease judgment criteria, the robots will release drugs, allowing people to see the potential of biological computing related technologies that can be integrated into micro-nano robot technology.(What is biological computing? Read 2022 The active Chinese biocomputing companies under the digital economy era officially announced)
Although micro-nano robots were conceived in 1966, the real research began with the birth of scanning tunneling microscope in IBM's Zurich laboratory in 1982. The emergence of nanotechnology in the 1990s greatly promoted the development process of micro-nano robots. Over the past 40 years, micro-nano robots have developed into a new frontier hot research field. Many countries have formulated strategies and plans related to micro-nano robots and invested huge amounts of money to seize the strategic high ground of micro-nano robots.
Currently, countries with relatively leading micro-nano robot research include the United States, Germany, Israel, Swiss , Japan and China. In terms of the quantity, quality and experimental research progress of articles published in top journals in micro-nano robot fields such as ACS Nano, Advanced Materials, Science Robotics, Nature Nanotechnology , China is at the same level as developed countries in Europe and the United States. For example, the current focus of scientific research is on the directions of magnetic swimming, bionic bacteria micro-nano robots, etc.
Figure丨The world's top research institution for micro-nano robots (Source: DeepTech)
For more research scholars and research progress, please download the original text of the report to view it.
Motion control ——At present, the hot spots in micro-nano robot research
Although the main application of micro-nano robot is also delivery, the main difference between it and traditional delivery systems is that the traditional delivery system is that the traditional delivery system is as blood flows with the flow, and the matching system is correctly matched and stays there. Arriving at the destination is based on luck, and being able to stay is based on ability. The movement of micro-nano robots is controllable, which means that they hope to reach their destination are also done by their ability, and they even have to go against the current.
However, motion control of micro-nano scale also needs to face two major problems: high viscosity environment and molecular thermal motion interference. The motion control of the micro-nano scale is much more difficult than the macro scale. First, we need to understand a basic principle: if a ball becomes twice the diameter, its surface area will become 4 times and its volume will become 8 times. Therefore, the larger an object, the smaller its surface area is relative to its volume. Conversely, the smaller an object, the larger its surface area is relative to its volume. Therefore, the huge surface area of will give it many special properties for nano-scale particles, which is one of the important characteristics of nanomaterials.
Similarly, because of its tiny size, the surface area of micro-nano robots will be much larger than their volume. A huge surface area means a huge friction or viscous force, while a small volume means a small mass or inertia. Therefore, micro-nano robots are in a low Reynolds number environment where viscous force dominates and inertial force is negligible. Unlike large robots that can move by inertia, if you want to drive micro-nano robots, you must continuously power them. However, due to its tiny size, power sources such as batteries, engines, etc. are difficult to load on micro-nano robots. If you carry chemical fuel yourself, it will be harmful to organisms, so field drives, especially magnetic field drives, have become the mainstream choice.
In addition, objects at the nanoscale will be disturbed by molecular Brownian motion when moving, that is, the random thermal motion of molecules will constantly impact micro-nano robots, making it much more difficult to control their motion behavior. Therefore, how to drive micro-nano robots has always been the focus of researchers' research.
Production and commercialization are still difficult
Micro-nano robots can be technically divided into four major links: design, manufacturing, motion control and functionalization, and motion control specifically involves driving, positioning feedback and cluster control.
Figure丨Disassembly of micro-nano robots—Six major technical links (Source: DeepTech)
These technical links are closely related, solving problems in one link may bring new problems in other links. Although there are separate implementations of each link such as driving, positioning feedback, and functionalization, there are currently their own solutions. , how to integrate multiple modules together at the micro-nano scale, carrying both energy, positioning devices, and drugs has become the main problem that needs to be solved in the in vitro research of micro-nano robots.
When it comes to the actual medical application of micro-nano robots in the body, they also face more questions: Will micro-nano robots be cleared by the immune system and die before they can succeed? How can micro-nano robots break through the numerous biological barriers in the body and penetrate deep into the organization? How to eventually recycle micro-nano robots injected into the human body? Can they be excreted from the body through biodegradation/kidneys? Will it cause long-term harm to the human body?
Therefore, the material development trend of micro-nano robots is gradually developing towards biodegradability and complete biocompatibility, but the problem is that the controllability of the movement and biodegradability of the materials are difficult to take into account.
Research nanorobot uses magnetic materials most commonly, which can be controlled by external magnetic fields. The problem is that the biocompatibility of magnetic materials is usually poor. There are many biodegradable materials currently studied, and the more representative ones are hydrogel or polypeptide . However, these materials cannot be driven by magnetic fields. After they enter the human body, where the energy comes from and how to control it becomes a new problem. If
is used for light driving, it will face the problem that infrared light has a penetration of only a few centimeters in the tissue, and cannot reach deep tissue.
If you want to solve these problems, you should learn from nature and draw design inspiration from bionic .
Although the liquid environment in which it is located is very sticky, bacteria can swim freely. Currently, we have developed spiral miniature swimming robots that are imitating bacteria and sperm that can swim independently. In addition, insects, -foot japonica , beetles , fish, jellyfish and other creatures have provided inspiration for the design of micro-nano robots. The materials of micro-nano robots, from metals that are harmful to the human body and polymers with poor controllability to new soft materials and cell structure , can realize the reconstruction of appearance and show ideal propulsion performance in low Reynolds number media.
In addition, in the natural state, organisms still have many self-organization phenomena, resulting in clustering effects. For example, E. coli will form a cluster motion similar to fish, nematode will gather to form large clumps, and form network-shaped clusters around it. Clustered motion micro-nano robots have more advantages than single micro-nano robots in terms of carrying capacity, imaging contrast, overcoming resistance and overall control. Therefore, clustered motion control is also an important direction for the development of micro-nano robots in the future.
Micro-nano robots will show their skills in the field of precision medicine
can be expected. After solving the above series of problems, micro-nano robots will play an important role in the medical field, go deep into the organization, and carry out accurate drug delivery, surgery, medical imaging and diagnosis, which coincides with the concept of precision medicine.
With the continuous development of new technologies such as gene sequencing, targeted drug research and development, cell immunotherapy, and gene therapy, precision medicine has changed the previous simple doctor-patient interaction relationship, emphasizing the comprehensive and full-process observation and diagnosis of patients, and proposes differentiated and personalized medical plans.
From the perspective of influence in the application field, the clinical value that micro-nano robots may bring will be higher in the field of delivery and surgery, and therefore their attention in the field of scientific research and the expectations in the field of application will also be higher.
(Source: Medical Micro/Nanorobots in Precision Medicine, DeepTech)
After the future, its users will be clinicians, and may form a complementary and partially substitutive relationship with existing minimally invasive surgery, vascular interventional robots and other technologies: micro-nano robots have better performance, but their costs will also be higher, and those problems that ordinary medical technologies can solve will not be necessary to be carried out through micro-nano robots. The clinical application research and development of
micro-nano robots requires close cooperation with clinicians at the early stage, find the pain points and unmet needs of existing clinical technologies on the demand side, and evaluate its safety and effectiveness on the application side.
Looking at the development of nanotechnology, the era of simply synthesizing a nanomaterial and studying their special properties is slowly passing. In the future, people will pay more attention to how to integrate nanomaterials into a complex device or even system to complete more complex tasks. (Medical) micro-nano robots are one of the important directions.
To sum up , medical micro-nano robots are still in the middle and early stages of scientific research exploration, and there are still a large number of real scenarios and engineering problems that need to be solved before clinical applications. , such as achieving accurate motion control in the body, the degradability and safety of materials, how to pass through the biological barrier in the body, etc., these cross-tech problems bring complex and difficult difficulties.
The idea of scientific research is to split complex problems into many simple problems, overcome them step by step, accumulate small amounts into many, from quantitative change to qualitative change. Overall, we are optimistic about the development prospects of micro-nano robots.
*The above analysis is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice
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