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)
doi: 10.1038/ncomms14942
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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.
