Published on November 27, 2024
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Updated on November 27, 2024
Dates
on the December 3, 2024
Café : 15h
Séminaire: 15h15
Séminaire: 15h15
Location
Institut de Physique de Nice
Metabolic gels: from chemical microreactors to polymeric actuators
Seminars of the Institut de Physique de Nice,
Abstract:
Abstract:
The existence of living organisms is evidence that functional motile autonomous materials can be built robustly using macromolecules. However, the challenge of building from the molecule to the macroscopic scale a purely synthetic functional chemomechanical material that harness chemical energy to produce motion is unmet. Inspired by Yoshida’s work, we create synthetic autonomous chemomechanical polymeric materials made of acrylamide hydrogels doped with the catalyst of the Belousov Zhabotinsky(BZ) reaction . We identify the role of the surrounding medium chemistry and gel radius for the occurrence of BZ gel oscillations, quantified by the Damkohler number, ratio of chemical reaction to diffusion rates. We also argue that the gel chemomechanics arises from the change in solvation energy. These findings contribute to the understanding of Nature’s ability to harvest chemical energy for actuation.
