Gizmorama - January 20, 2016

Good Morning,

Every now and again there's a headline that sounds like a premise to a sci-fi movie. Come on, this screams 'sci-fi movie' - 'Mini force fields' used to control tiny robots. Apparently, it's not science fiction, it's science fact.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- 'Mini force fields' used to control tiny robots --*
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers at Purdue University are hoping to deploy teams of tiny robots in fields ranging from manufacturing to medicine. To control them, scientists have developed a technology likened to "mini force fields."

Researchers want the robots to work cooperatively, but be controlled individually. To do so, they built miniature remote controls made of planar coils. The coils can emit individualized magnetic fields.

"The robots are too small to put batteries on them, so they can't have onboard power," David Cappelleri, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, said in a press release. "You need to use an external way to power them. We use magnetic fields to generate forces on the robots. It's like using mini force fields."

Previously, researchers have positioned planar coils on the outskirts of the "workspace" where the robots have been deployed. But this technique exerts only a general force field. Cappelleri and his colleagues came up with a new technique for yielding more intimate control.

"The approach we came up with works at the microscale, and it will be the first one that can give truly independent motion of multiple microrobots in the same workspace because we are able to produce localized fields as opposed to a global field," Cappelleri said. "What we can do now, instead of having these coils all around on the outside, is to print planar coils directly onto the substrate."

Researchers can vary the forces exerted on individual robots my manipulating the strength of the electric current running through the tiny coils.

Early tests used robots with a diameter of two millimeters, twice the size of a pinhead, but researchers hope to shrink the microrobots down to 250 microns, as small as a dust mite.

Once perfected, scientists say they could perform additive manufacturing -- assembling delicate electronic components. Or they could be put to work in a petri dish sorting cells. They could even be outfitted with probes and sent in search of cancer cells.

"Cancer cells have different stiffness characteristics than non-cancer cells, and in some of our previous work we put force sensors on the end of these robots to figure out which ones are stiffer than others," Cappelleri said.

The research is ongoing, but their progress was detailed in a recent scientific paper published in the journal Micromachines.


*-- Flexible film could enable phone-sized cancer detector --*
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - A newly developed film may pave the way for better, cheaper cancer detection technologies. Eventually, scientists hope the film can be used to build cancer detection devices the size of a phone -- something a patient could potentially use at home.

The film is able to produce circularly polarized light, coiling it into a 3-D helix shape. The ability is vital to certain cancer detection processes that trace cancer biomarkers in the blood.

Currently, big, expensive machines do the processing. But that could change thanks to the ongoing research into polarizing film at the University of Michigan.

The detection process works by spotting certain types of protein or bits of DNA in the blood that signal the early presence cancer in the body. Scientists begin by designing synthetic biological particles that attract these biomarkers. These particles are then coated in a substance that reflects circularly polarized light.

When added to a patient's blood sample and examined under circularly polarized light -- created using the film -- a detection device can determine whether the particles have bound with the biomarkers or not.

"This film is light, flexible and easy to manufacture," lead researcher Nicholas Kotov said in a press release. "It creates many new possible applications for circularly polarized light, of which cancer detection is just one."

Scientists created the film by twisting and pressing flat a soft contact lens. The lens is then combined with alternating layers of reflective gold nanoparticles and clear polyurethane. The gold nanoparticles naturally organize into S-shaped chains which help produce the circularly polarized light.

Kotov hopes the technology can soon be put in the hands of doctors. He says it could eventually even be used by patients in their own home. The novel film was described in a new paper published in the journal Nature Materials.

"More frequent monitoring could enable doctors to catch cancer recurrence earlier, to more effectively monitor the effectiveness of medications and to give patients better peace of mind," Kotov said. "This new film may help make that happen."

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