Researchers believe special "muscles" when electrically activated will someday power microscopic robots smaller than a grain of sand.

Scientists also believe electrically charged chains of particles that build up human muscles can also lead to electronics with the ability to automatically rewire themselves at any desired state.

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These microscopic robots or microbots will be able to swim inside the human body to fight disease or even crawl their way into bombs to defuse them, among many other capabilities and applications, said Michael Solomon, co-author of the study and chemical engineer at the University of Michigan.

Solomon explains the challenge in building these tiny robots involves making them fully mobile. Since they are so tiny, the microbots will need to move autonomously and exert force via pushing and pulling other objects.

Researchers now suggest muscles developed from special chains of microscopic particles that assemble on their own can help power these microbots. Researchers have used spherical particles made from a combination of polystyrene, which is the plastic component of styrofoam.

These particles were stretched to form a shape of a rice grain, which is 0.6 microns wide and 3 microns long. The human hair, which measures 1oo microns, is wider than these microbots.

The microbots were then painted gold on one side to serve as a terminal for an electrical current. As the microbots are placed in salt water, the gilded sides started attracting each other microbots to build chains of 50 to 60 microbots.

This phenomenon became more pronounced as the salt concentration was raised by the researchers. When an alternate current was placed in the system, however, the chains grew at an unprecedented rate that seems to be limitless.

Researchers believe this property can be used to build or destroy chains that can enhance flexing and can substitute for muscles in artificial systems.

Although human muscles are 1,000 times more powerful, these microbots can build a flexible muscle system and along with networks of other microbots can execute various applications.

These findings were published online in the journal, Nature Materials.

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