A complexidade na natureza é muito, mas muito fácil de surgir - será mesmo???

segunda-feira, maio 01, 2017

Rich complex behaviour of self-assembled nanoparticles far from equilibrium

Serim Ilday, Ghaith Makey, Gursoy B. Akguc, Özgün Yavuz, Onur Tokel, Ihor Pavlov, Oguz Gülseren & F. Ömer Ilday

Nature Communications 8, Article number: 14942 (2017)


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Nonlinear phenomenaSelf-assembly

Received: 04 October 2016 Accepted: 13 February 2017

Published online: 26 April 2017

Source/Fonte: Research Perspectives

Abstract

A profoundly fundamental question at the interface between physics and biology remains open: what are the minimum requirements for emergence of complex behaviour from nonliving systems? Here, we address this question and report complex behaviour of tens to thousands of colloidal nanoparticles in a system designed to be as plain as possible: the system is driven far from equilibrium by ultrafast laser pulses that create spatiotemporal temperature gradients, inducing Marangoni flow that drags particles towards aggregation; strong Brownian motion, used as source of fluctuations, opposes aggregation. Nonlinear feedback mechanisms naturally arise between flow, aggregate and Brownian motion, allowing fast external control with minimal intervention. Consequently, complex behaviour, analogous to those seen in living organisms, emerges, whereby aggregates can self-sustain, self-regulate, self-replicate, self-heal and can be transferred from one location to another, all within seconds. Aggregates can comprise only one pattern or bifurcated patterns can coexist, compete, endure or perish.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported partially by the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant ERC-617521 NLL and TÜBITAK under project 115F110.

Author information

Affiliations

Department of Physics, Bilkent University, Ankara 06800, Turkey
Serim Ilday, Ghaith Makey, Gursoy B. Akguc, Onur Tokel, Ihor Pavlov, Oguz Gülseren & F. Ömer Ilday

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bilkent University, Ankara 06800, Turkey
Özgün Yavuz & F. Ömer Ilday

Contributions

S.I. designed the research and interpreted the results with help from F.Ö.I, O.G. and O.T. Experiments were performed by S.I., with help from G.M., Ö.Y. and I.P. Analytical model was developed by F.Ö.I. Numerical simulations were performed by G.B.A., S.I. and O.G. Image processing analyses were conducted by G.M.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Serim Ilday.


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