Interactive and synergistic behaviours of multiple heterogeneous microrobots

Abstract

Microrobots have been extensively studied for biomedical applications, and significant innovations and advances have been made in diverse aspects of the field. However, most studies have been based on individual microrobots with limited capabilities, constraining their scalability of functions for practical use. Here, we demonstrate the interactive and synergistic behaviours of multiple microrobots that are heterogeneous or incompletely homogeneous. A frequency-response theory is proposed where in a certain frequency range of an external rotating magnetic field (RMF), microrobots with dispersed and linearly aligned magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) would exhibit similar and different behaviour, respectively. These microrobots rotate following the rotation of the external field, and such complete rotational motion is interrupted when the frequency exceeds a certain value, called the critical frequency (c_f), but such behaviour is more prominent in microrobots with linear MNPs. Upon further investigating the effect of various parameters on the c_f of the microrobots during the fabrication process, we find that heterogeneous microrobots with specific c_f values can be customized. In addition, experiments and simulations are combined to show the hydrodynamic behaviours around the rotating microrobots at different frequencies. Based on these findings, the interactive and synergistic behaviours of multiple microrobots are presented, which suggests great potential for the independent execution of multiple tasks or the synergistic performance of complex tasks and is significant for the future development of interactive synergistic microrobots in the biomedical field.