Physicists at the United States Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have created “micro-robots”, composed of microparticles, which assemble themselves into star shapes when an alternating magnetic field is applied. The robots can be made to pick up, transport and put down other non-magnetic particles. Alexey Snezhko, one of the physicists, said, “We can make them open their jaws and close them. This gives us the opportunity to use these creatures as mini-robots performing useful tasks. You can move them around and pick up and drop objects.” The discovery could enable the fabrication of precisely designed functional materials that are not currently possible. The materials are also capable of self-repair. Igor Aronson, also a physicist with the Materials Science Division at Argonne, said, “For us, this is very exciting. This is a new paradigm for reconfigurable self-assembled materials that can perform useful functions.” The team’s study was published in the journal Nature Materials.