Controllable Swarming and Assembly of Micro/Nanomachines

摘要

Motion is a common phenomenon in biological processes. Major advances have been made in designing various self-propelled micromachines that harvest different types of energies into mechanical movement to achieve biomedicine and biological applications. Inspired by fascinating self-organization motion of natural creatures, the swarming or assembly of synthetic microanomachines (often referred to microanoswimmers, microanorobots, microanomachines, or microanomotors), are able to mimic these amazing natural systems to help humanity accomplishing complex biological tasks. This review described the fuel induced methods (enzyme, hydrogen peroxide, hydrazine, et al.) and fuel-free induced approaches (electric, ultrasound, light, and magnetic) that led to control the assembly and swarming of synthetic microanomachines. Such behavior is of fundamental importance in improving our understanding of self-assembly processes that are occurring on molecular to macroscopic length scales.