Materiomics approaches for stimuli-responsive microrobots

Abstract

The development of stimuli-responsive smart materials able to perform “on-demand” tasks is one of the most enticing interdisciplinary challenges in science. In the last decade, synthetic micro/nanorobots have shown enormous potential in this regard by overcoming the time reversal motion symmetry at low Reynolds numbers, so conferring dissipative motion for the active exploration of complex fluids in the field of sensing, capturing and targeting analytes in desired locations. This review presents a critical overview of inorganic/organic materials and their combination aiming for sustainable microrobot fabrication through a materiomics approach, ultimately highlighting their structure–function correlation for future applications related to the removal of environmental pollutants. A rational selection of materials combination by leveraging sustainable fabrication approaches will be presented, ultimately classifying the resulting microrobots as a function of their efficiency in terms of bespoke quantitative parameters (microrobot materials, size, speed, stability, and reconfigurability) and finally introducing the field of biohybrid microrobots.