Skin patches instead of needles: can nanotechnology vaccinate the world?

Think of a device which is around postage

a

stamp size and has thousands upon thousands of tiny spikes on its surface: this is a nanopatch. There are approximately 20,000 projections per square centimeter on each patch, each around 60 to 100 micrometres in length. One micrometre is one million times smaller than a metre, so the height of these tiny spikes is approximately the width of a human hair.

The nanopatch is produced using a technique known as “deep reactive ion etching”, which essentially makes use of ions (charged atoms) in an electric field to selectively etch the surface of a material away. Controlling the electric field and the ions allows a high degree of control, so the microprojections are regularly spaced and of similar dimensions.

An added advantage of this approach is it has been used in the electronic circuit and solar energy industries for many years, and has the potential for increasing the scale of production.

https://theconversation.com/skin-patches-instead-of-needles-can-nanotechnology-vaccinate-the-world-68492