Abstract

This talk will give an overview of the advances in the development of sperm-driven microswimmers. These autonomously moving microswimmers were first developed by capturing single bovine sperm cells in microtubes made from rolled up ferromagnetic nanomembranes. They can be directed by weak external magnetic fields while the sperm cell is the propulsion source. A cell release mechanism was implemented by incorporating thermo-responsive materials and using a temperature trigger to remotely open the microtubes. This thermally triggered shape reconfiguration is also implemented as motion control or propulsion mechanism in artificial microswimmers. Finally, more recent developments are presented that investigate the motion of sperm-driven microswimmers in body fluids, on-board conditioning of sperm and sperm-particle interactions which are prospective methods for reproductive biology and medicine.