Information, dissipation, and typical paths to self-assembling active materials

When chemically fueled, molecular self-assembly can sustain dynamic networks of polymeric fibers – hydrogels – with tunable properties. For a finite supply of fuel, the fibrous networks are transient, as competing reactions switch molecular subunits between active and inactive states, drive the assembly and collapse of fibers, and dissipate energy. Being a far-from-equilibrium process, the fibrous network and its mechanical properties can reflect the history of its preparation. This talk will describe our stochastic thermodynamic and information-theoretic framework to variationally identify nonequilibrium histories that are typical, among the myriad possibilities. It will also describe computer simulations of an experimentally-informed model that reproduces key features of recent gelators, including the observation via confocal microscopy of fast fiber growth and stochastic fiber collapse. Overall, this work is directed at understanding the paths that self-organizing systems travel, how nonequilibrium forces collectively drive structure formation, and how these paths contain clues about the design of dissipative self-assembling systems.