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. 2022 Sep 16;10:1002171. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2022.1002171

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Copyright © 2022 Zhang, Liu, Guan and Mou.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Categories and representative examples of MNRs. (A) Chemically-powered MNRs. (A1) Bubble propulsion: tubular catalytic microrobot propelled by O₂-bubble ejection in an aqueous H₂O₂ solution. (Manjare et al., 2013) Copyright 2013. Reproduced with permission from American Chemical Society. (A2) Self-diffusiophoresis: polymerization-powered microrobot. (Pavlick et al., 2011) Copyright 2011. Reproduced with permission from John Wiley and Sons. (A3) Self-electrophoresis: Au‒Pt bimetallic nanorod propelled by a self-electrophoresis mechanism in an aqueous H₂O₂ solution (Paxton et al., 2004). Copyright 2004. Reproduced with permission from American Chemical Society. (A4) Surface tension gradient: autonomous motors powered by the rapid depolymerization reaction of poly (2-ethyl cyanoacrylate) (PECA). (Zhang et al., 2013) Copyright 2013. Reproduced with permission from American Chemical Society. (B) External-field-powered MNRs. (B1) Magnetic field: magnetic field propelled micromotor (Dreyfus et al., 2005). (B2) Ultrasound: metallic micro-rods propelled by ultrasound. (Wang et al., 2012) Copyright 2012. Reproduced with permission from American Chemical Society. (B3) Light: an isotropic TiO₂ microrobot powered by UV light. (Chen et al., 2017) Copyright 2017. Reproduced with permission from John Wiley and Sons. (B4) Electric field: rod-like nanorobots powered by an electric field. (Calvo-Marzal et al., 2010) Copyright 2010. Reproduced with permission from The Royal Society of Chemistry. (C) Biohybrid MNRs. (C1) Muscle cells: a muscle-cell-driven hybrid microrobot (Williams et al., 2014) (C2) Bacteria: bacteria-driven microswimmers based on polyelectrolyte multilayer (PEM) magnetic nanoparticles attached to an E. coli MG1655 bacterium. (Park et al., 2017) Copyright 2017. Reproduced with permission from American Chemical Society. (C3) Sperms: sperm-hybrid microrobots for drug delivery in the female reproductive tract. (Xu et al., 2018) Copyright 2018. Reproduced with permission from American Chemical Society. (C4) Immune cells: nanoparticle-loaded neutrophil micromotors. (Shao et al., 2017) Copyright 2017. Reproduced with permission from John Wiley and Sons.