Life-Inspired Soft Matter

Introduction

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.

Current Developments

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.

Future Challenges

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.

Proposed Approaches

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.

Impact of the Project

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 adaptability pave ways to new materials concepts.

Long-term Vision

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.