Low sperm motility is a major cause of male infertility. Scientists from the Institute for Integrative Nanosciences in Dresden, Germany have created metal-coated polymer microhelices capable of coiling around the tail of a healthy, but immotile sperm in order to propel it towards an egg for potential fertilization. The team still has some obstacles to overcome before preparing to test in humans, but the project offers hope for couples unable to conceive naturally. In vitro fertilization can be very expensive, especially when considering the relatively low success rates.

Click here to read the article published in Nano Letters, the journal of the American Chemical Society.