EAGER/Collaborative Research: Programmed Stimuli-responsive Mesoscale Polymers Inspired by Worm Blobs as Emergent Super-Materials

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This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) will support fundamental research aimed at developing novel materials composed of stimuli-responsive filaments. The long-term desired behavior of these materials is inspired by the behavior of 1-cm-long California blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus, Annelida: Clitellata: Lumbriculidae), a fascinating organism that collectively self-assembles to form functional worm blobs. The three-dimensional, soft, and tangled blob behaves as a living material that responds to environmental stresses through dynamic transformations of the blob’s morphology. The specific goals of this EAGER project are two-fold: to conduct biophysical experiments and mathematical analysis on living worms, and to synthesize soft, flexible, filament-like structures in polymer solutions. The behavior of both biological and synthetic systems will be studied at the level of individual filaments, pairs of twisted filaments, and collections of interacting structures. Understanding the properties and movements of these types of filaments has direct implications for creating novel materials, flexible robots, and objects that are pre-programmed to perform useful functions in response to external stimuli such as light, heat, or chemical reagents. The research team will include students from diverse disciplines and under-represented groups, thus adding powerful educational impact to the project and enriching its societal and human impact. This EAGER project will synthesize worm-inspired pre-programmed filamentous structures in polymer solutions capable of exhibiting tangling and untangling dynamics in a triggered fashion. While physically entangled filament-like structures are of great interest at both the molecular and macroscopic size scales, the interactions of structures of intermediate size, termed mesoscale, are not well understood. This project seeks to identify the chemistry, architectures, and most useful stimuli that enable collective systems of mesoscale polymers (MSPs) to readily tangle and untangle on command. Rudimentary segmental actuation of filamentous MSPs has been demonstrated by the research team. However, achieving intricate knotting and unknotting of collective filamentous structures remains a challenge. Here, chiral, twisting, and braiding mesoscale polymer structures will be synthesized using photochemical and fluid-induced methods. These efforts will be guided by fundamental research on the mechanics of knotting and unknotting in the living system. Together, these efforts could bring on a leap in materials synthesis while uncovering new foundational capabilities in the synthetic design of complex interacting filamentous structures.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.