Worm blobs as entangled living polymers: from topological active matter to flexible soft robot collectives

Deblais, Antoine; Prathyusha, K. R.; Sinaasappel, Rosa; Tuazon, Harry; Tiwari, Ishant; Patil, Vishal P.; Bhamla, M. Saad

doi:10.1039/d3sm00542a

Cited by 13 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 133 publications

(301 reference statements)

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“…Through physical entanglement, active worms have been designed to display emergent locomotion [38] and to reliably grasp, lift, and move objects [122]. Study on entangled active polymers, which self-organize and dynamically respond to changing environmental conditions, could provide a promising way to achieve this goal and might inspire new classes of synthetic supermaterials and soft robotics that perform tasks in complex natural environments [123].…”

Section: Soft Roboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-equilibrium structural and dynamic behaviors of active polymers in complex and crowded environments

Zhu,

Gao,

Sun

et al. 2024

Rep. Prog. Phys.

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Active matter systems, which convert internal chemical energy or energy from the environment into directed motion, are ubiquitous in nature and exhibit a range of emerging non-equilibrium behaviors. However, most of the current works on active matter have been devoted to particles, and the study of active polymers has only recently come into the spotlight due to their prevalence within living organisms. The intricate interplay between activity and conformational degrees of freedom gives rise to novel structural and dynamical behaviors of active polymers. Research in active polymers remarkably broadens diverse concepts of polymer physics, such as molecular architecture, dynamics, scaling and so on, which is of significant importance for the development of new polymer materials with unique performance. Furthermore, active polymers are often found in strongly interacting and crowded systems and in complex environments, so that the understanding of this behavior is essential for future developments of novel polymer-based biomaterials. This review thereby focuses on the study of active polymers in complex and crowded environments, and aims to provide insights into the fundamental physics underlying the adaptive and collective behaviors far from equilibrium, as well as the open challenges that the field is currently facing.

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Section: Soft Roboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%