Research Project

Adaptive Soft Matter

Our group is a member of the multidisciplinary research center CRC 1459 which aims to develop emergent intelligence in synthetic systems. Such materials should have the ability to perceive and store information and apply it towards adaptive behavior within changing environments. This could provide new opportunities in, for instance, self-regulating biomedical technology, soft robotics, and computing.
In our contribution to CRC 1459, we will develop dissipative block copolymer nanostructures and explore their application as sensors, actuators, and memory in synthetic adaptive and intelligent systems.
We are designing block copolymers that can actively alter their composition through energy-driven block fragmentation. By incorporating and tuning orthogonal and multivalent fragmentation mechanisms the stability, lifetime and self-assembly behavior of the block copolymer aqueous solution can be adjusted. The resulting out-of-equilibrium nanostructures can only exist under a sufficient energy supply. These nanostructures will be stabilized into dynamic steady states by regulating the energy supply through the implementation of intrinsic feedback mechanisms.