[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Inspired by ubiquitous phenomena of shape transformation in nature, extensive research effort has been devoted to self-morphing materials in recent decades. The self-morphing materials transfer their shapes from 2D planar films into 3D structures under environmental triggers such as humidity, pH, temperature, and light. Due to the extreme values of shape transformation, this kind of materials are invaluable for fabrication of various devices and systems, including flexible electronics, displays, artificial muscles, microfluidic valves and gates, actuation components in soft robotics and so on. The quintessence of fabricating such materials lies in programming structural anisotropies in them. Although various strategies and techniques have been developed to realize such a goal, this research area is still in its infant stages. New strategies and new techniques are still strongly desired. This dissertation focuses on exploring new possibilities of generating and programming anisotropies to develop novel self-morphing materials. New types of anisotropies are realized by controlling the distribution of polymeric crystal phase (Chapter 2), swellable guest medium (Chapter 3), laser induced graphene (Chapter 4), phase change microstructures (Chapter 5), and soft-stiff hybridized structures (Chapter 6) in self-morphing materials. Programmable shape changing behaviors, such as bending, folding, helical curling and buckling, were demonstrated on these materials by pattering the anisotropic structures. Moreover, for the first time, we demonstrate that the CO2 laser direct writing, which is normally used as a cutting tool in industry, has shown great potential in programming anisotropies in these newly developed self-morphing materials. These demonstrated strategies and techniques offer unique capabilities in fabricating functional self-morphing devices such as soft gripper, locomotive robot, rewritable paper, reconfigurable pneumatic actuator, and acoustic metamaterials.