Light‐Manipulated Millimeter‐Scale Swimming Robot for Precise Navigation.

Micro‐swimming robots have been increasingly emphasized in the fields of targeted drug delivery and water surface cleaning, which mainly use open external structures or external environments to assist navigation, but there are still salient problems, such as the difficulty of stable capture and poor navigation accuracy. Theoretically, a light‐driven swimming robot can have a symmetrical embedded structure to constrain surface tension gradient forces and thermophoretic forces in a wide range of directions and convert them into precise directional forces. Therefore, a sustained‐capture swimming robot is developed with precise navigation consisting of TiO2/polypyrrole (PPy) composites containing a symmetric inner truncated‐cone hole structure and realized multiple controllable motion patterns. Excitingly, the capture motion of the TiO2/PPy inner truncated‐cone hole structure robot “TPHR” can be accurately controlled by programmable automation, with capture travel speeds of up to ≈23.64 mm s−1. Its excellent kinematic performance stems from the high photothermal conversion efficiency (≈47.83%) of the composite and the synergistic effect between thermo‐capillary and thermo‐convective flows. Furthermore, a patterning precision movement, water surface oil‐cleaning microstructure assembly, etc. are realized, reflecting the engineering application value of TPHR. This structure provides a novel strategy for the development of micro‐swimming robots with stable capture and sustainable motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]