Reactive Inkjet Printing of Silk Swimmers

Biological Micro-motors are one of the most remarkable products of evolution; they can perform biological tasks with surprisingly high efficiency. A novel form of miniaturized man-made self-propelled micro-motors based on silk have been designed and fabricated in this thesis. These ‘swimmers’ were made from regenerated Bombyx mori silk fibroin via 3D reactive inkjet printing under ambient processing conditions. While Bombyx mori silk exhibits impressive mechanical properties, remarkable biocompatibility, controlled biodegradability, environmental stability, and morphologic flexibility, silk swimmers have expanded the range of potential applications even to the biomedical platform and sensitive protein therapeutics.
Micro-motors are able to convert chemical or external energy into mechanical motion. Two different types of propulsion mechanisms were studied for silk swimmers: catalytically powered bubble propulsion and surface tension gradient powered.