Biological Sciences Division
Published October 16, 2020 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Electrothermal soft manipulator enabling safe transport and handling of thin cell/tissue sheets and bioelectronic devices

Creators

  • 1. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • 2. Purdue University
  • 3. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
  • 4. University of Illinois at Chicago
  • 5. University of Chicago
  • 6. Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute
  • 7. Chung-Ang University

Description

"Living" cell sheets or bioelectronic chips have great potentials to improve the quality of diagnostics and therapies. However, handling these thin and delicate materials remains a grand challenge because the external force applied for gripping and releasing can easily deform or damage the materials. This study presents a soft manipulator that can manipulate and transport cell/tissue sheets and ultrathin wearable biosensing devices seamlessly by recapitulating how a cephalopod's suction cup works. The soft manipulator consists of an ultrafast thermo-responsive, microchanneled hydrogel layer with tissue-like softness and an electric heater layer. The electric current to the manipulator drives microchannels of the gel to shrink/expand and results in a pressure change through the microchannels. The manipulator can lift/detach an object within 10 s and can be used repeatedly over 50 times. This soft manipulator would be highly useful for safe and reliable assembly and implantation of therapeutic cell/tissue sheets and biosensing devices.

Data availability

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data related to this paper may be requested from the authors.

Files

sciadv.abc5630.pdf

Files (162.6 MB)

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Supplementary materials
md5:4b263151380925d0e08681263cb2a50e
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Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1126/sciadv.abc5630
Other
oai:uchicago.tind.io:10946

Funding

U.S. National Science Foundation
STC-EBICS Grant
U.S. National Science Foundation
STC-EBICS Grant
U.S. National Science Foundation
1554249
National Institutes of Health
1R21 HL109192
National Institutes of Health
K08 EY024339
National Institutes of Health
R01EY029409
National Institutes of Health
P30 EY001792
United States Department of Defense
W81XWH-17-1-0122
Korea Institute of Science and Technology-Europe
Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
WPI-I2CNER
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
1R21EB026099-01A1
Veterans Affairs Office of Research and Development
I01BX004080

UChicago Information

Division(s)
Biological Sciences Division
Department(s)
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Radiology