Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ACTIVE_ADAPTIVE (Active and Adaptive: Reconfigurable Active Colloids with Internal Feedback and Communication Schemes)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-11-01 al 2024-04-30
In biological materials, ensembles of cells autonomously work, in a highly concerted manner and responding to a broad range of stimuli, in order to obtain a target structure or function. Single cells can move, change their shape or mechanical properties, and send out/receive signals to/from neighboring cells to heal a wound or to differentiate between different tissue types. Crucially, in order to manifest such complex behavior, the material’s structural units must be active and adaptive. Activity implies that they can process available energy sources, typically in the form of nutrients, to carry out all their functions. Adaptation is then the key to enable switching and reconfiguring between those different functions in different conditions. Remarkably, in living materials this happens in a fully autonomous way, in other words, relying only on internal feedback mechanisms and communication schemes.
The objective of the proposed research is to take a robotics-inspired minimalistic approach to design, realize and study a new class of buliding blocks for active materials. They will, in addition to on-board energy conversion, present internal degrees of freedom, sensing-feedback schemes, and communication pathways toward the objective of creating microscale structural units for fully autonomous active materials.
This vision will enable a broad community of physicists, material scientists, chemists and engineers to develop synthetic micro-structured materials with a similar spectrum of capabilities as their biological counterparts. Their creation offers tantalizing opportunities for self-healing materials, autonomous micro/nanoscale assembly and actuation, smart delivery and transport, sensing and remediation.
The objective of the proposed research is to take a robotics-inspired minimalistic approach to design, realize and study a new class of buliding blocks for active materials. They will, in addition to on-board energy conversion, present internal degrees of freedom, sensing-feedback schemes, and communication pathways toward the objective of creating microscale structural units for fully autonomous active materials.
This vision will enable a broad community of physicists, material scientists, chemists and engineers to develop synthetic micro-structured materials with a similar spectrum of capabilities as their biological counterparts. Their creation offers tantalizing opportunities for self-healing materials, autonomous micro/nanoscale assembly and actuation, smart delivery and transport, sensing and remediation.
Since the beginning of the project, our team has worked to synthesize, fabricate and characterize a range of active particles with adaptation and control schemes. In particular we have:
- Developed numerical code to simulate the behavior of active particles subjected to spatio-temporal modulation of motility
- Developed a new experimental system of active particles whose motility can be controlled by light illumination patterns
- Fabricated reconfigurable active swimmers comprising temperature-responsive hydrogels for shape adaptation
- Developed a new fabrication scheme that combines colloidal assembly with two-photon nanolithography to fabricate a broad range of multi-material adaptive microscale units
- Developed numerical code to simulate the behavior of active particles subjected to spatio-temporal modulation of motility
- Developed a new experimental system of active particles whose motility can be controlled by light illumination patterns
- Fabricated reconfigurable active swimmers comprising temperature-responsive hydrogels for shape adaptation
- Developed a new fabrication scheme that combines colloidal assembly with two-photon nanolithography to fabricate a broad range of multi-material adaptive microscale units
The progress reported above is beyond the current state of the art in the following directions:
- The state of the art of synthetic microswimmers at the colloidal scale employs rigid particles and particles composed of materials with fixed properties, hence the demonstration of reconfigurable active swimmers at the microscale constitutes a significant step forward
- Typical control strategies to regulate the motility of active particles rely on a direct modulation of the stimulus used to induce propulsion in the first place, leading to a limited choice of control parameters. The strategies that we have implemented allow for an orthogonal control between propulsion and reconfiguration, enabling adaptive behavior.
By the end of the project, we expect to continue with the proposed workplan to realize and control a new class of active units for advanced materials applications
- The state of the art of synthetic microswimmers at the colloidal scale employs rigid particles and particles composed of materials with fixed properties, hence the demonstration of reconfigurable active swimmers at the microscale constitutes a significant step forward
- Typical control strategies to regulate the motility of active particles rely on a direct modulation of the stimulus used to induce propulsion in the first place, leading to a limited choice of control parameters. The strategies that we have implemented allow for an orthogonal control between propulsion and reconfiguration, enabling adaptive behavior.
By the end of the project, we expect to continue with the proposed workplan to realize and control a new class of active units for advanced materials applications