Objective
To fulfil the quest for increasingly functional materials, biology has already offered inspiration towards advances in materials science. So far, bioinspired materials include, e.g. liquid- and dirt-repelling surfaces, structural colours, biomimetic composites, strong fibers, tissue templating, and underwater adhesives. On the other hand, stimulus-responsive, shape memory, and reconfigurable materials have been presented with switchable functional properties. They are typically in global or local energy equilibrium and their properties do not evolve or learn to allow new responses.
The next challenge is to explore whether some of the characteristics considered typical for life could inspire new behaviours of artificial soft matter towards life-inspired materials.
Herein I suggest three approaches: 1) Voltage controlled dynamic out-of-equilibrium dissipative mechanical properties and temperature-based switching between dynamic and static properties. 2) Light and voltage-driven self-regulation with feedback loops for adaptation, homeostasis, and oscillations. 3) Optical spiking for dynamic structural colours.
The impact of this project arises from demonstrators and paradigm changing concepts for materials memory, biological learning-inspired processes, and dynamic feedback control. The underlying embodied intelligence and adaptibility pave ways to new materials concepts. In the long run, materials with such properties are foreseen, e.g. in human-device interfacing, artificial skin, prostheses, technical aids, wearables, soft robots, and medical applications.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringfibers
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcolors
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseasesRNA virusesHIV
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologyimplants
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinephysiologyhomeostasis
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
02150 Espoo
Finland