Autonomous mesoscale positioning emerging from myelin filament self-organization and Marangoni flows.

ABSTRACT: Out-of-equilibrium molecular systems hold great promise as dynamic, reconfigurable matter that executes complex tasks autonomously. However, translating molecular scale dynamics into spatiotemporally controlled phenomena emerging at mesoscopic scale remains a challenge-especially if one aims at a design where the system itself maintains gradients that are required to establish spatial differentiation. Here, we demonstrate how surface tension gradients, facilitated by a linear amphiphile molecule, generate Marangoni flows that coordinate the positioning of amphiphile source and drain droplets floating at air-water interfaces. Importantly, at the same time, this amphiphile leads, via buckling instabilities in lamellar systems of said amphiphile, to the assembly of millimeter long filaments t

SUBMITTER: van der Weijden A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7511956 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature