{"id":217428,"date":"2025-07-09T02:23:43","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T07:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/microrobots-shaped-and-steered-by-metal-patches-could-aid-drug-delivery-and-pollution-cleanup"},"modified":"2025-07-09T02:23:43","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T07:23:43","slug":"microrobots-shaped-and-steered-by-metal-patches-could-aid-drug-delivery-and-pollution-cleanup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/microrobots-shaped-and-steered-by-metal-patches-could-aid-drug-delivery-and-pollution-cleanup","title":{"rendered":"Microrobots shaped and steered by metal patches could aid drug delivery and pollution cleanup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/microrobots-shaped-and-steered-by-metal-patches-could-aid-drug-delivery-and-pollution-cleanup.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have created a new way to build and control tiny particles that can move and work like microscopic robots, offering a powerful tool with applications in biomedical and environmental research.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-025-61218-x\" target=\"_blank\">study,<\/a> published in <i>Nature Communications<\/i>, describes a new method of fabrication that combines high-precision 3D printing, called two-photon lithography, with a microstenciling technique. The team prints both the particle and its stencil together, then deposits a thin layer of metal\u2014such as gold, platinum or cobalt\u2014through the stencil\u2019s openings. When the stencil is removed, a metal patch remains on the particle.<\/p>\n<p>The particles, invisible to the naked eye, can be made in almost any shape and patterned with surface patches as small as 0.2 microns\u2014more than 500 times thinner than a human hair. The metal patches guide how the particles move when exposed to electric or magnetic fields, or chemical gradients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have created a new way to build and control tiny particles that can move and work like microscopic robots, offering a powerful tool with applications in biomedical and environmental research. The study, published in Nature Communications, describes a new method of fabrication that combines high-precision 3D printing, called [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1489,11,19,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}