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Results for “reconfigurable assemblies”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Self-assembled reconfigurable pump architectures via magnetic colloidal swarms

Self-assembled swarms of interactive active units, which are adaptive and dynamically reconfigurable to accommodate different functionalities, represent a promising platform for the development of next-generation robotics. Here, we utilize the emergent collective behavior of active magnetic colloids confined in quasi-two-dimensional arrays of overlapping wells to demonstrate the self-organization of a colloidal swarm into a dynamic pump architecture capable of controlled transport of passive cargo particles. This dynamic architecture provides a global unidirectional looping flow pattern along the entire length of the system. We show that the flow direction of the dynamic swarm-based pump can be externally controlled by a phase shift of a driving magnetic field energizing the swarm. The experimental observations are supported by computational modeling based on phenomenological coarse-grained particle dynamics coupled to shallow-water Navier-Stokes hydrodynamics. In conclusion, our findings demonstrate how the emergent collective behavior of a swarm can be orchestrated into a desired functionality by exploiting the interplay between activity and confinement potentials.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2026

Reconfigurable self-assembly of porous anisotropic colloids in nematic liquid crystals

Dispersions of anisotropic nanoparticles in liquid crystalline hosts recently yielded new soft condensed matter states, like the thermally reconfigurable monoclinic and orthorhombic biaxial nematic liquid crystals, with a plethora of unusual phases and phase transformations. Our current study shows that the nanoscale porous nature of colloids with micrometer-range overall dimensions also enables highly reconfigurable orientations and assemblies of the microparticles, allowing for realization of condensed matter states with unusual combinations of low-symmetry nematic or smectic order and fluidity. Much like the anisotropic nanoparticles studied previously, these nanoporous anisotropic colloids exhibit thermally reconfigurable oriented alignment with respect to the far-field director, as well as diverse low-symmetry liquid crystalline phase behaviors. Furthermore, our findings open doors to fundamental and applied uses of low-symmetry molecular-colloidal orientationally ordered states of matter with uninhibited fluidity, as well as liquid crystals with partial positional ordering, like low-symmetry smectics, which could lead to applications in metamaterial designs, electro-optics, photonics, etc.

colloidal dispersion↗
DOE OSTI2024

Construction of Reconfigurable and Polymorphic DNA Origami Assemblies with Coiled‐Coil Patches and Patterns

Abstract DNA origami nanodevices achieve programmable structure and tunable mechanical and dynamic properties by leveraging the sequence‐specific interactions of nucleic acids. Previous advances have also established DNA origami as a useful building block to make well‐defined micron‐scale structures through hierarchical self‐assembly, but these efforts have largely leveraged the structural features of DNA origami. The tunable dynamic and mechanical properties also provide an opportunity to make assemblies with adaptive structures and properties. Here the integration of DNA origami hinge nanodevices and coiled‐coil peptides are reported into hybrid reconfigurable assemblies. With the same dynamic device and peptide interaction, it is made multiple higher‐order assemblies (i.e., polymorphic assembly) by organizing clusters of peptides into patches or arranging single peptides into patterns on the surfaces of DNA origami to control the relative orientation of devices. The coiled‐coil interactions are used to construct circular and linear assemblies whose structure and mechanical properties can be modulated with DNA‐based reconfiguration. Reconfiguration of linear assemblies leads to micron scale motions and ≈2.5‐10‐fold increase in bending stiffness. The results provide a foundation for stimulus‐responsive hybrid assemblies that can adapt their structure and properties in response to nucleic acid, peptide, protein, or other triggers.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Non-Reciprocity, Metastability, and Dynamic Reconfiguration in Co-Assembly of Active and Passive Particles

Living organisms often exhibit non-reciprocal interactions where the forces acting on the objects are not equal in magnitude or opposite in direction. The combination of reciprocal and non-reciprocal interactions between synthetic building blocks remains largely unexplored. Here, out-of-equilibrium assemblies of non-motile isotropic passive and metal-patched motile active particles are formed by overlapping bulk interactions with directed self-propulsion. An external alternating current (AC) electric field generates concurrent dipolar and induced-charge electrophoretic forces between the particles which are evaluated using microscopy. The interaction force measurements allow to determine the degree of reciprocity in interactions, which is tunable by designing the active particle and its trajectory. While linearly-propelled active particles evade assembly with passive particles, helically propelled active particles form active-passive clusters with dynamic reconfiguration and long-lived metastability. Large clusters display programmable fluctuations and reconfigurability by controlling the fraction of active particles. The study establishes principles of integrating reciprocal and non-reciprocal interactions in guided colloidal assembly of reconfigurable metastable structures.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2024

Blueprinting extendable nanomaterials with standardized protein blocks

A wooden house frame consists of many different lumber pieces, but because of the regularity of these building blocks, the structure can be designed using straightforward geometrical principles. The design of multicomponent protein assemblies, in comparison, has been much more complex, largely owing to the irregular shapes of protein structures. Here we describe extendable linear, curved and angled protein building blocks, as well as inter-block interactions, that conform to specified geometric standards; assemblies designed using these blocks inherit their extendability and regular interaction surfaces, enabling them to be expanded or contracted by varying the number of modules, and reinforced with secondary struts. Using X-ray crystallography and electron microscopy, we validate nanomaterial designs ranging from simple polygonal and circular oligomers that can be concentrically nested, up to large polyhedral nanocages and unbounded straight ‘train track’ assemblies with reconfigurable sizes and geometries that can be readily blueprinted. Because of the complexity of protein structures and sequence–structure relationships, it has not previously been possible to build up large protein assemblies by deliberate placement of protein backbones onto a blank three-dimensional canvas; the simplicity and geometric regularity of our design platform now enables construction of protein nanomaterials according to ‘back of an envelope’ architectural blueprints.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2021

Accelerated annealing of colloidal crystal monolayers by means of cyclically applied electric fields

Abstract External fields are commonly applied to accelerate colloidal crystallization; however, accelerated self-assembly kinetics can negatively impact the quality of crystal structures. We show that cyclically applied electric fields can produce high quality colloidal crystals by annealing local disorder. We find that the optimal off-duration for maximum annealing is approximately one-half of the characteristic melting half lifetime of the crystalline phase. Local six-fold bond orientational order grows more rapidly than global scattering peaks, indicating that local restructuring leads global annealing. Molecular dynamics simulations of cyclically activated systems show that the ratio of optimal off-duration for maximum annealing and crystal melting time is insensitive to particle interaction details. This research provides a quantitative relationship describing how the cyclic application of fields produces high quality colloidal crystals by cycling at the fundamental time scale for local defect rearrangements; such understanding of dynamics and kinetics can be applied for reconfigurable colloidal assembly.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Steric Modulation of Protein‐Mediated Nanoparticle Assembly: Controlling Cluster Size, Polydispersity, and FRET Responses by Rebalancing Short‐ and Long‐Range Interactions

Understanding and manipulating protein-nanoparticle interactions is of broad interest to fields ranging from nanomedicine to the biological fabrication of functional hierarchical materials. This study investigates how steric forces introduced by a pegylated derivative of superfolder green fluorescent protein (sfGFP) that is monofunctional for silica binding modulate the delicate interplay of long-range (electrostatic and van der Waals) and short-range (protein-mediated) interactions in pH-responsive silica nanoparticle (SiNP) assembly by bifunctional silica-binding sfGFP. Increasing the length of the PEG segment and pre-incubating SiNPs with increasing concentrations of pegylated proteins enables precise control over cluster size within the 800–1450 nm range with a sixfold decrease in polydispersity index to a remarkable 0.1 endpoint. Weakening short-range attractive interactions via mutagenesis extends this control to clusters in the 50–250 nm range and reveals that the Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) efficiency of clusters scales linearly with cluster diameter below 230 nm but increases only by 15% as clusters grow to 1450 nm. Furthermore, these findings enable the development of a system that provides an optical readout to dynamic changes in solution conditions enacted by a combination of pH adjustment and ion charge screening.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Hierarchical Materials from High Information Content Macromolecular Building Blocks: Construction, Dynamic Interventions, and Prediction

Hierarchical materials that exhibit order over multiple length scales are ubiquitous in nature. Because hierarchy gives rise to unique properties and functions, many have sought inspiration from nature when designing and fabricating hierarchical matter. More and more, however, nature’s own high-information content building blocks, proteins, peptides, and peptidomimetics, are being coopted to build hierarchy because the information that determines structure, function, and interfacial interactions can be readily encoded in these versatile macromolecules. Here, we take stock of recent progress in the rational design and characterization of hierarchical materials produced from high-information content blocks with a focus on stimuli-responsive and “smart” architectures. We also review advances in the use of computational simulations and data-driven predictions to shed light on how the side chain chemistry and conformational flexibility of macromolecular blocks drive the emergence of order and the acquisition of hierarchy and also on how ionic, solvent, and surface effects influence the outcomes of assembly. Furthermore, continued progress in the above areas will ultimately usher in an era where an understanding of designed interactions, surface effects, and solution conditions can be harnessed to achieve predictive materials synthesis across scale and drive emergent phenomena in the self-assembly and reconfiguration of high-information content building blocks.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2020

Device-quality, reconfigurable metamaterials from shape-directed nanocrystal assembly

Significance Colloidal nanocrystals with defined sizes and shapes are ideal building blocks for nanofabrication. However, the ability to arbitrarily arrange them on surfaces with control over their orientation remains elusive. Here we report a shallow-template-assisted DNA-mediated assembly strategy to precisely arrange colloidal nanocrystals on surfaces, with single-particle control across submillimeter areas. In addition, the oligonucleotide bonds between the nanocrystals and substrate can be reversibly expanded and contracted enabling postsynthetic tunability of the assembled structures. Using this approach, we synthesized a nanocrystal-based, dynamically tunable metasurface (an anomalous reflector), thereby illustrating the potential for unique device construction via DNA programmable assembly.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Reconfiguration of Amorphous Complex Oxides: A Route to a Broad Range of Assembly Phenomena, Hybrid Materials, and Novel Functionalities

This work demonstrate that reconfiguration of amorphous oxide layers drives the assembly of oxide-based and freestanding nanomembranes into 3D structures with a radius of a few hundred nanometers. Reconfiguration-driven assembly is a versatile approach to impart large strains and strain gradients in a broad palette of complex oxides. This capability allows for manipulating and enhancing ferroelectricity, flexoelectricity, piezoelectricity, superconductivity, and ferromagnetism in complex oxides. Moreover, by the approach presented in this work, strain-engineered oxides are obtained in the form of 3D structures that can be fabricated in parallel on any substrate, including large-area and single crystalline semiconductor substrates. This approach will create a vast expanse of possibilities to investigate and leverage strain-tunable effects in amorphous, poly-crystalline, and single-crystalline complex oxides. Reconfiguration-driven assembly of NMs also allows combining different materials in a radial geometry and through scalable processes. For example, radial superlattices of Si (or GaAs) and various complex oxides or alternating layers of different complex oxides (e.g., SrTiO 3 and LaAlO 3 ) could be fabricated by release and heating of bilayer NMs. Here, a broad palette of electronic band structures and spin–orbit interactions could then be obtained by tailoring the curvature of the self-assembled NMs and the materials that the heterostructure comprises.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Self-Assembled Magnetic Nanoparticle Layers: Structural Control for Reconfigurable Magnetism and Functional Applications

We advance soft X-ray vector ptychographic tomography to map the 3D magnetization field in self-assembled superparamagnetic nanoparticles at a liquid–liquid interface, revealing how layered structures influence magnetic ordering. We observe that monolayers with low coordination numbers exhibit weak magnetic order, with magnetic vortices disrupting spin alignment. In contrast, bilayers and trilayers with higher coordination numbers display long-range magnetic order with strong spin correlations across larger distances and a suppression of magnetic vortices. We further quantify the average distance for vortex–antivortex pairs as 26.0 ± 2.0 nm, while vortex–vortex and antivortex–antivortex pairs exhibit larger separations, averaging 44.9 ± 5.2 and 54.1 ± 7.4 nm, respectively. These experimental results are supported by micromagnetic Monte Carlo simulations. Our findings illustrate how layered structures enhance magnetic order and spin correlation in superparamagnetic nanoparticle assemblies, providing a promising approach for tuning magnetic properties in applications such as data storage, microrobotics, and biomedicine.

Lu, Xingyuan↗
DOE OSTI2020

Control of the Folding Dynamics of Self-Reconfiguring Magnetic Microbots Using Liquid Crystallinity

Reconfigurable microdevices are being explored in a range of contexts where their life-like abilities to move and change shape are important. While much work has been done to control the motion of these microdevices by engineering their geometry and composition, little is known about their dynamics in complex fluid environments with non-Newtonian rheology. Here in this paper, it is shown how the actuation dynamics of reconfigurable microdevices made by assembly of patchy magnetic microcubes, which are referred to as “microbots,” can be modulated by their interactions with the anisotropic viscoelastic environment of a liquid crystal (LC). The free energy arising from the elastic strain of LC and formation of topological defects around the microbots influences their folding dynamics, which can be tuned by tailoring both the far-field orientation of the LC and the local ordering of the LC at the microbot surfaces. These findings represent a first step toward establishing a general set of design rules to control the dynamics of microbots using complex anisotropic fluids.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2020

Reconfiguring DNA Nanotube Architectures via Selective Regulation of Terminating Structures

Molecular assemblies inside cells often undergo structural reconfiguration in response to stimuli to alter their function. Adaptive reconfiguration of cytoskeletal networks, for example, enables cellular shape change, movement, and cargo transport and plays a key role in driving complex processes such as division and differentiation. The cellular cytoskeleton is a self-assembling polymer network composed of simple filaments, so reconfiguration often occurs through the rearrangement of its component filaments’ connectivities. DNA nanotubes have emerged as promising building blocks for constructing programmable synthetic analogs of cytoskeletal networks. Nucleating seeds can control when and where nanotubes grow and capping structures can bind nanotube ends to stop growth. Such seeding and capping structure, collectively called termini, can organize nanotubes into larger architectures. However, these structures cannot be selectively activated or inactivated in response to specific stimuli to rearrange nanotube architectures, a key property of cytoskeletal networks. Here we demonstrate how selective regulation of the binding affinity of DNA nanotube termini for DNA nanotube monomers or nanotube ends can direct the reconfiguration of nanotube architectures. Using DNA hybridization and strand displacement reactions that specifically activate or inactivate four orthogonal nanotube termini, we demonstrate that nanotube architectures can be reconfigured by selective addition or removal of unique termini. Lastly, we show how terminus activation could be a sensitive detector and amplifier of a DNA sequence signal. These results could enable the development of adaptive and multifunctional materials or diagnostic tools.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Reconfigurable Grating Diffraction Structural Color in Self-Assembled Colloidal Crystals

Self-assembled colloidal crystals display structural colors due to light diffracted from their microscale, ordered structure. This color arises due to Bragg reflection (BR) or grating diffraction (GD); the latter mechanism is much less explored than the former. Here the design space for generating GD structural color is identified and its relative advantages are demonstrated. Electrophoretic deposition is used to self-assemble crystals with fine crystal grains from colloids of diameter 1.0 µm. The structural color in transmission is tunable across the full visible spectrum. The optimum optical response—represented by both color intensity and saturation—is observed at low layer number (≤5 layers). The spectral response is well predicted by Mie scattering of the crystals. Taken together, the experimental and theoretical results demonstrate that vivid grating colors with high color saturation can be produced from thin layers of micron-sized colloids. These colloidal crystals extend the potential of artificial structural color materials.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Spontaneous Reorganization of DNA-Based Polymers in Higher Ordered Structures Fueled by RNA

We demonstrate a strategy that allows for the spontaneous reconfiguration of self-assembled DNA polymers exploiting RNA as chemical fuel. To do this, we have rationally designed orthogonally addressable DNA building blocks that can be transiently deactivated by RNA fuels and subtracted temporarily from participation in the self-assembly process. Through a fine modulation of the rate at which the building blocks are reactivated we can carefully control the final composition of the polymer and convert a disordered polymer in a higher order polymer, which is disfavored from a thermodynamic point of view. We measure the dynamic reconfiguration via fluorescent signals and confocal microscopy, and we derive a kinetic model that captures the experimental results. Our approach suggests a novel route toward the development of biomolecular materials in which engineered chemical reactions support the autonomous spatial reorganization of multiple components.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗