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Abstract |
Biological systems inspire a new paradigm for material synthesis, aiming to design materials that emulate living systems. Colloidal particles endowed with specific interactions provide a particularly promising approach for realizing this vision. In this talk I will focus on a set of colloidal spheres with specific, time-dependent interactions, and demonstrate that the interactions can be programmed so that three fundamental properties of living materials are realized: The ability to spontaneously assemble complex structures; the ability to self-replicate; and the ability to perform complex and coordinated reactions that enable transformations impossible to realize if a single structure acted alone. |
