Implementation of microrobots in various biomedical applications is continuously updating day by day and still needs to develop for the sake of humankind's healthy life and environmental remediation. Abnormal acidity changes in the stomach lead to several health issues, including gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and peptic ulcers. Commonly, Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and acid-based tablets are employed to treat acid reflexes. Surgeries are recommended for the advanced gastrointestinal illness. In the near future, microrobots will be an efficient alternative for the surgeries. Abnormal gastric acid secretion is the main cause of the gastrointestinal diseases. Gastric acid is a chemical combination of hydrochloric acid, pepsin, and lipase. Gastric acid not only causes disease but also protects from the ingested pathogenic microorganisms from food and plays an important role in good digestion. Among the conventional techniques for monitoring acidity, fluorescent microrobots stand out due to their advantages, such as fluorescence and sensitivity.
Explosive detection is an extremely attention-seeking research area in the twentieth century, and there is a need to develop probes for the different detection environments. Probes for detecting explosives exist mostly as power, crystal, liquid, and paper strips; they are unsuitable for hard-to-reach areas. Picric acid is an extremely dangerous explosive among the other nitro-explosive chemicals, an even stronger explosive than trinitrotoluene (TNT). Excellent solubility, high toxicity at very low concentrations, and wide utilization in several industries like pharmaceuticals, dye industries, and fuel for rockets make them one of the highly influenced pollutants for water bodies and soil.
Tetracycline (Tc) is one of the most widely employed antibiotics due to its high antibacterial activity, cheap and toxic-free. Excessive usage of tetracycline develops antibiotic resistance and pollutes the water and soil bodies and even foods, including milk, eggs, etc. Presently, there are several detection methods for tetracycline, including spectroscopy, immunoassay, and chemotherapy. Among them, fluorescent sensing is outstanding due to its high sensitivity. Fluorescent microrobots are the best candidates for sensing the interest of target pollutants in hard-to-reach areas. Commercial fluorescent dye molecules are suffering from aggregation-caused quenching, which restricts their application. In this project, for the first time, we have developed aggregation-induced emissive (AIE) multi-fluorescent magnetically powered Diaminodicyanoquinodimethanes (DADQs) based microrobots for monitoring intragastric acidity. Extending the application of the fabricated microrobots into other applications was also possible, and then it was implemented to detect picric acid and tetracycline. The electorsDDADM addressed the fabrication of molecular materials-based fluorescent microrobots with excellent AIE fluorescence and their potential in various applications, as discussed above. The results of the project will pave a new path for the fabrication of new types of molecular material-based microrobots and their future applications, which can boost the EU sustainable development goals.
Hence, the overall objectives of electorsDDADM were (i) Synthesis of the derivatives of the Diaminodicyanoquinodimethanes (DADQs), (ii) Fabrication of the molecular materials-based microrobots via simple reprecipitation method, (iii) Actuation of the micromotors are analysed under the magnetic field, (iv) Applications in different fields, including bio-medical field and water cleaning treatments, and (v) Insight into the molecular level interaction that could be behind the fluorescent changes during the application process.
