Surprises and Research Opportunities in Soft Matter

A fundamental challenge of modern physical science is to form structure that is not frozen in place but instead reconfigures internally driven by energy throughput and adapts to its environment robustly. With epithelial cell monolayers when they respond to injury, we find problems of intelligent materials. With catalytic enzymes and out-of-equilibrium chemical reactions, we find problems of active matter adaptability. With ratchets, we put active matter to work. A picture emerges in which simple experiments can dissect macroscopic phenomena in ways that surprise.

 

* research conducted in collaboration with Sun-Min Yu, Xinyu Luo, Tian Huang, Qi Pan, and Yining Gan.