Rebuilding the cell or matching the certain cell functions can be the way we understand how real cells work and even go beyond for intelligent production. Over the last decade, the EU has invested heavily in searching for cell alternatives to impact pharmaceutics, therapeutics, agriculture, and more general chemical processing. The technological possibilities of relevant research are now at a tipping point and will lead to a revolution in medicine, food and sustainability in the next 5 to 20 years. We noticed that most works focused on proof-of-concept research of compartmentalised/localised reactions and mass transfer among/within cells. Given that the cell wall is equally important like other organelles to the cell’s space-sensitive activities, a robust, function-tuneable artificial envelop is highly needed. As far as we know, the effort to build an artificial cell wall is far from enough. The state-of-art knowledge of man-made shell, from material selection, interfacial assembly kinetics to tailoring functionality, is limited. Therefore, a systematic exploration concentrating on building blocks of the artificial cell wall can bridge the gap of EU in the progress of this field. Due to the Covid lockdown, we had to reconsider the methodologies, e.g. we developed the Genetic Algorithm to accelerate material optimisation, and replaced the collaborative microfluidics with the extensive emulsion stability study. However, the overall goal has not been changed. The bonus of the smartly optimised shell candidate is that we know much clearer than before about the physical chemistry at the complex interface. Therefore, the significance of our updated project even broadened the horizon to the basic interfacial science and methodology advancement, which would pave the way for the community to understand the behaviour of low-dimensional materials at the interface. Arc-for-Core project contributes to developing novel candidates for artificial compartment by investigating low-dimensional materials as building blocks. We demonstrate high versatility of low dimensional materials in forming a composite shell, which manifests tailorable mechanical properties, conductance, stimuli-response, and potential of interfacial assembly. Furthermore, through the updated methodology of processing, the 2D materials in the latter case offer us the chance to investigate their behaviour at the complex and multiphasic interface.
