Programming of Self-Assembly in Time with Chemical Clocks
Living systems can grow bottom-up a huge variety of materials with the highest degree of sophistication, and an overall efficiency that remains largely unparalleled by artificial fabrication techniques. Moreover, living materials are adaptive i.e. are able to exist and perform autonomously under dissipative conditions. These features are possible thanks to the ability to control complex reactions networks, carefully organized in spatio-temporal sequences.
Filling the gap between state-of-art stimuli-responsive materials and living materials requires to combine materials science with systems chemistry. In this way, chemical curiosities such as clock and oscillating reactions become versatile tools to program in time the autonomous and transient self-assembly of organic as well as inorganic building blocks.
The design of such ad hoc reaction networks is at the core of my current research efforts. I will show how to “clock” molecules, polymers and metal cations into different structures (from nanoparticles to gels), without the need for external control, and how this approach can pave the way to the development of (almost) living artificial materials.
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