Descripción del proyecto
Comprobar el comportamiento colectivo de los agentes activos mediante la luz
La materia activa engloba los sistemas cuyos componentes fundamentales disipan energía para ejercer fuerzas entre sí. Los agentes activos se encuentran en todas las esferas de la naturaleza: desde los motores moleculares hasta las colonias de bacterias, los bancos de peces y las multitudes humanas. Asimismo, dichos sistemas están intrínsecamente fuera del equilibrio térmico. Los agentes excitados internamente representan mejor la materia activa que aquellos excitados por fuerzas externas. Sin embargo, todavía no hay forma de comprobar su respuesta ante estímulos externos. El equipo del proyecto PhotoActive, financiado por las Acciones Marie Skłodowska-Curie, pretende diseñar agentes macroscópicos autopropulsados que se excitan internamente, pero se impulsan mediante un estímulo externo. La idea es desarrollar e implementar partículas similares a Hexbug, cuya fuente de energía proviene de una célula fotovoltaica.
Objetivo
In the last years, there has been an outstanding growing interest in active matter. In these complex systems, a number of interacting agents consume and convert energy into mechanical motion, representing nice examples of out-of-equilibrium behavior. Such systems are important because they can be found in nature ranging from the microscopic to the macroscopic scale, e.g. molecular motors, cells, bird flocks, or human crowds. Interestingly, and despite the obvious differences among the agents that compose these systems, common behavioral patterns have been identified such as collective motion, anomalous diffusion, segregation, or clogging in the flow through constrictions. Aiming for a better understanding of these complex active systems a reductionist strategy is necessary, and this is why the study of active granular matter (very simple self-propelled agents that interact uniquely by contacts) is widely acknowledged.
Within active grains, we can distinguish between internally excited ones (such as Hexbugs) or externally forced ones. Certainly, the former have the advantage to closely resemble real active matter but, to date, also have the drawback of not allowing testing their response to external stimulus. My proposal, PhotoActive, aims to fill this gap by designing novel macroscopic self-propelled agents that are internally excited but can be driven by an external stimulus as it occurs with all natural systems. The idea is to develop and implement Hexbug-like particles whose source of energy comes from a photovoltaic cell. The great advantage of these novel agents concerns the versatility that provides using a fully controllable illumination panel with which we can impose spatial intensity gradients or temporally evolving patterns. In this way, and applying an interdisciplinary approach involving experiments, numerical modeling, and simulations, we ambition boosting the existing understanding of active matter systems.
Ámbito científico
Programa(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Régimen de financiación
HORIZON-AG-UN - HORIZON Unit GrantCoordinador
31080 Pamplona
España