Cover Picture: Macromol. Biosci. 6/2005

Abstract

Cover: The fabrication of microparts, as those shown in the figure, for the production of scaffolds by means of robotic microassembly is challenging due to their small size and complex 3‐D shape. To facilitate the microassembly process, another challenge is the requirement that the parts need to be stably fixed on the wafer but at the same time easily removed by the microgripper. Currently, SU‐8, a biocompatible material, is used to test the feasibility of the microassembly. Further details can be found in the Review by H. Zhang, D. W. Hutmacher,* F. Chollet, A. N. Poo, and E. Burdet on page 477.

Magnetization directions and geometries of helical microswimmers for linear velocity-frequency response

“…Biomedical applications include drug delivery [1,2], tissue manipulation [3][4][5], and in vivo diagnos tics and sensing [6][7][8][9]. A number of types of microrobots em ploying different propulsion techniques have been developed, including chemically powered microrobots dependent on external fuels to create phoretic flows [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18], externally con trolled biotic systems [19], dielectrophoretically manipulated robots [20], and magnetically actuated robots, including those that require a nearby surface [21][22][23][24] and those that can swim in bulk fluids [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35].…”

Preparation of antimicrobial polycarboxybetaine‐based hydrogels for studies of drug loading and release

“…We observed that the CBMAE content had a great influence on the cumulative release amounts of TCHC. The cumulative release of TCHC increased from 30 to 90% with increasing content of CBMAE from 0 to 0.56 g. This was because inclusion complexes formed between TCHC and the polymeric network during the drug-loading process, 4 and this internal ARTICLE WILEYONLINELIBRARY.COM/APP combination provided a force to prevent the TCHC molecules from releasing and resulted in a low release amount.…”

“…The poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide) (PNIPAM) hydrogel is one of the most popular investigated hydrogels, and it has been widely explored for drug delivery, biosensors, mass separations, and tissue engineering. [1][2][3][4] However, microbial adhesion and the formation of biofilms have been observed on the surface of the hydrogel when it was used as a biomedical material; the attachment and proliferation of microorganisms on the hydrogel surface could trigger an immune response and inflammation and result in the removal of the hydrogel. Therefore, the use of an antimicrobial hydrogel is critical for PNIPAM's application in biomaterials such as drug-release devices.…”

Versatile methods for the fabrication of polyvinylidene fluoride microstructures

“…biosensors, microactuators, drug delivery systems, microfluidics, and tissue engineering) (Bashir 2004;Zhang et al 2005;Khademhosseini et al 2006). MEMS devices have been traditionally manufactured from silicon materials; however, polymers have gained interest in the field of BioMEMS due to their improved biocompatibility, broad range of properties, ease of fabrication, and low cost (Spearing 2000;Ferrell et al 2007).…”