Journal: bioRxiv
Article Title: Bio-Inspired Ultrasound-Driven Ultrafast Soft Microgripper
doi: 10.1101/2025.07.30.667446
Figure Lengend Snippet: ( A ) Photographs show that the flytrap rapidly snaps its two hinged lobes to capture insects upon sensing external stimuli, while the vorticella employs cilia’s rapid oscillation to generate fluid streaming to remotely attract microorganisms. ( B ) Schematic illustration of our developed bio-inspired SonoGripper, which mimics flytrap’s stimuli-triggered motion and vorticella ’s cilia-driven remote attraction mechanism. Under acoustic waves, SonoGripper’s arms undergo rapid oscillation and deformation, generating acoustic streaming vortices around their outward-pointed sharp edges. These vortices facilitate object attracting, arm closure, and object encapsulation. When the acoustic excitation is switched off, the SonoGripper’s arms swiftly revert to their original states. Scale bar is 10 µm. ( C ) One-step UV-light photopolymerization developed on an inverted microscope setup (scale bar is 5 mm) utilizes UV light and a photomask (scale bar is 100 µm) to fabricate SonoGripper. The photomask with transparent and opaque regions determines local UV exposure to selectively pattern a soft geometry from photosensitive hydrogel mixture. ( D ) Image of high throughput array of SonoGrippers on a thin glass substrate (scale bar is 10 mm) and its optical microscope image (Scale bar is 50 µm). ( E ) The simulation shows a SonoGripper (100 µm in length, 7 µm in width, 20 in thickness) triggered by ultrasound, creating acoustic streaming vortices. Scale bar is 50 µm. ( F ) Optical microscope image snapshots of fabricated SonoGripper variants with different structures including (i) basic version, (ii) double-edged arm tips, (ii) curved arms with a central edge, and (iv) multi-gripper arrays combined on a bulk body. Scale bar is 50 µm. ( G ) Schematic illustration demonstrates the SonoGripper can fast, remotely, multidirectionally, and simultaneously attract and grip diverse targets with varying sizes, shapes, and mobilities.
Article Snippet: The photo-initiator triggers the crosslinking of PEGDA 700 upon exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light (Nikon Intensilight C-HFGI, intensity: 130 W).
Techniques: Encapsulation, Inverted Microscopy, High Throughput Screening Assay, Microscopy
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