Multistimuli-responsive insect-scale soft robotics based on anisotropic super-aligned VO₂ nanowire/carbon nanotube bimorph actuators

The emerging soft robots have attracted increasing interests and gotten rapidly developed, but it is still challenging to substantially promote their response speed and work density. In addition, the wireless way to conveniently trigger the devices, especially for the centimeter-scale ones, is highly desired. Herein, the multistimuli-responsive insect-scale soft robotics is reported based on a super-aligned VO2 nanowire arrays (NAs)/carbon nanotube (CNT) bimorph film, comprehensively addressing aforementioned problems. The as-prepared VO2 NA/CNT bimorph shows improved actuation performance, anisotropic behavior, rapid response to various stimuli (heat, light, and electricity), and multiple movement modes (bending and torsion). Consequently, diverse untethered, insect-scale soft robots, serving as biomimetic crawler, lifter, gripper, wing of flying robots, torsional robot, and so on are successfully demonstrated. The findings provide an effective strategy to develop high-performance macroscopic mechanical devices by assembling functional nanostructures.