Adaptive colloidal suspensions programmed via external fields

近十年来，外场胶体分散一直是一个活跃的研究课题。在这里，我们提出了将胶体悬浮液暴露于外场的想法，该外场通过某些功能或程序与颗粒结构耦合。因此，通过外场，胶体悬浮液对其自身结构起反应；悬架变得自适应。采用实验、理论和计算机模拟相结合的方法，对这一概念进行了验证，并探索了这种自适应胶体的性质。我们的目标是对这种新型非平衡物质进行基本的和粒子解析的理解，但也期望通过外部编程可以获得丰富的新胶体材料特性。

Colloidal dispersions in external fields have been an active research topic during the last decade. Here we propose the idea to expose a colloidal suspension to an external field that is coupled to the particle configuration by some function or programme. Thus, via the external field, the colloidal suspension reacts to its own configuration; the Suspension becomes adaptive. Using the complementary approaches of experiment, theory and computer simulation, we test this concept and explore the properties of such adaptive colloids. We aim for a fundamental and particle-resolved understanding of this new type of nonequilibrium matter, but also expect that a wealth of new colloidal material properties become accessible by external programming.