Biological tissue and the living cell arguably constitute the epitome of soft matter. Especially in terms of dynamic functions and processes such as transport, signalling/communication, self-healing, replication, transient assembly, and motion, biological systems go far beyond anything current artificial materials have to offer. In this presentation, I will show how we applied core concepts of biological self-assembly to the construction of dynamic, out-of-equilibrium soft molecular materials, in an attempt to bridge this gap. We can now start to control dynamic properties such as lifetime, self-healing, and spatial/temporal distribution by coupling the self-assembly process to chemical reactions.[1,2] In particular, I will show how a hydrogelator based fibrous network is grown far removed from thermodynamic equilibrium, using a chemical fuel as an energy source to drive the self-assembly. Reminiscent of GTP-driven growth of microtubules, the formation and collapse of the self-assembled structures is directly coupled to the consumption of the chemical fuel, allowing the formation of transient assemblies, and control over structure formation in time and space.[3,4] I will show how such concepts may be used to control molecular scale forces and motion.

Active materials by coupling self assembly to the consumption of fuel

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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