Magnetoelectric 3D printing technology
The revolution of actuatable composites
Prof. Salvador Pané i Vidal
Prof. Dr. Salvador Pané i Vidal (Barcelona, 1980) is currently a Professor of Materials for Robotics at the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) and Co-​Director of the Multi-​Scale Robotics Lab at ETH Zürich. He received a B.S. (2003), M.S (2004) and a PhD in Chemistry (2008) from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) in the field of the electrodeposition of magnetic composites and magnetoresistive alloys. He became a postdoctoral researcher at IRIS in August 2008 and Senior Research Scientist in 2012. He has authored or co-​authored more than 150 articles in international peer-​reviewed journals and books for education in science.
Dr. Pané is currently working on bridging chemistry and electrochemistry with robotics at small scales. In the field of micro-​ and nanororobotics, his major focus has been the miniaturization of magnetic materials and conductive polymers and hydrogels for targeted drug delivery. He is the head of the MSRL electrochemistry laboratory at ETH, which he established in 2010. At present, he teaches a course on nanorobotics and supervises several on-​going PhD theses. He has established successful international collaborations with several research groups and companies and institutions (Hirtenberger AG, IGS Research, EMPA, Steiger AG).
Dr. Pané is/has been the coordinator for a FET Open project (MANAQA), and a FET Proactive (ANGIE). In June 2013, Dr. Pané was awarded the highly competitive Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The grant provides 1.5 million euros over five years to investigate composite nanomaterials with magnetoelectric properties for chemical and biomedical applications. From 2015 to 2019, he was the Chair of the COST Action “e-​MINDS: Electrochemical processing methodologies and corrosion protection for device and systems miniaturization” which brings together more than 40 European academic and industrial participants related to the areas of electrochemical manufacturing and corrosion science. Since 2016, he has been serving on the board of editors in the journal Applied Materials Today (Elsevier). He represents Switzerland in the European Academy of Surface Technology (EAST). He is also co-​founder of the startups Magnes AG and Oxyle AG. In November 2017, he was awarded a Consolidator Grant (ERC). The Grant provides 2.0 million euros over five years to develop gated porous nanorobots that can be remotely instructed to produce electrical fields. In future, these nanorobots could be used in the spinal cord or the optical nerve. In 2019, Dr. Pané was honored with the Big-​on-Small Award at the International Conference on Manipulation, Automation and Robotics at Small Scales (MARSS). He also received the ERC Proof-​of-Concept grant (2019) to develop magnetoelectric reactors for water cleaning applications.
Dr. Hao Ye
Dr. Hao Ye (1995) received his Ph.D. degree in pharmaceutics from Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, P. R. China in 2021, supervised by Prof. Zhonggui He and Prof. Jin Sun. His Ph.D. thesis was based on the use of the natural functions of tumor-associated cells for intercellular drug delivery and also the research of biomimetic nanomaterials and tumor immunotherapy.
He joined Multi-Scale Robotics Lab (MSRL) during his doctoral studies and worked on the exploration of magnetoelectric nanorobots. He then joined MSRL as a postdoctoral associate working on bioinspired nanorobots.
Dr. Ye has participated in several projects funded by NSFC, SNSF, SSSTC, published over 13 peer-reviewed papers in international journals including ACS Nano, Biomaterials, Nano Letters, Bioactive materials, etc. He has been invited to give talks at international conferences, and was awarded the second prize of International Forum of Pharmacy Students in 2016. He received the excellent poster award of the 13th Chinese Pharmaceutical Conference in 2019.
Vitaly Pustovalov, PhDc.
Vitaly Pustovalov received his Bachelor’s degree with honors in Biophysics from Lomonosov Moscow State University. He was deeply inspired by the idea of creating an autonomous artificial immune system. Therefore, his main focus was to investigate the immune cells’ enrolment at the inflammation site. In particular, his thesis was dedicated to the modelling of chemically-driven locomotion of neutrophils in the vicinity of a thrombus.
The Multi-Scale Robotics Lab Vitaly joined firstly during his Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at ETH Zürich. In the beginning, he worked very closely with Ph.D. students on the development of magnetically steerable microdevices for targeted drug delivery. Later on, he successfully pursued a Master’s thesis. Vitaly’s research topic was the development of a low-cost green synthesis of coated superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles as magnetic nano drivers.
Recently, Vitaly joined the MSRL as a Ph.D. student. During this time he will mainly focus on the creation of magnetoelectric inks for an innovative 3D printing technology.
Huimin Chen, PhDc.
Huimin received her bachelor’s degree in Measurement Technology and Instruments from the North University of China in 2019 and her master’s degree in Instrument and Meter Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2022. Her previous works focused on the locomotion of centimeter-scale robots, including steering, repeated jumping, and elevation-controllable jumping.
She joined ETH as a Ph.D. student in September 2022. Her role in the EVA project involves 3D printing system integration and demonstration design.
