Bioinspired Smart Self-regulating Material Systems

Sponsor: Department of Energy

Living organisms exhibit unique homeostatic abilities, maintaining tight control of their local environment through inter-conversions of chemical and mechanical energy and self-regulating feedback loops organized hierarchically across many length scales. Inspired by this, we have applied the concept of homeostasis to the design of autonomous materials and created a synthetic homeostatic material, SMARTS (Self-regulated Mechano-chemical Adaptively Reconfigurable Tunable System), which reversibly transduce external or internal chemical inputs into user-defined outputs via the “on/off” mechanical actuation of catalyst-bearing, hydrogel-driven microstructures. Further exploiting the potential would have transformative impacts in areas ranging from fatigue-reporting or self-healing system that help stabilize functions and prevent failure to smart materials that regulate energy usage.