CONTROL OF INORGANIC / POLYMERIC / BIOLOGICAL INTERFACES FOR DEVELOPMENT OF LIFE INSPIRED NANOSCALE MACHINERIES

K. Skorb

Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, "Potsdam-Golm Science Park, Am Mühlenberg 1, OT Golm 14476 Potsdam, P. O. Box: 14424 “Potsdam 14476, Germany

Abstract

Today increased interest of scientists is focused on dynamic, non-equilibrium processes and material properties varying with time for a life inspired nanoscale machinery. It involves needs for effective energy conversion with the focus on oscillation reactions, chemical networking, mimicking living systems, using cell metabolic life inspiration and ions, protons, concentration gradients. The high gain of last year project in my group [1-4] is (1) light initiated spatiotemporal proton concentration gradients running in parallel and (2) actuate soft matter to control bacteria, cells and protein recognition. It is based on the photocatalytic reactions on a semiconductor surface to local delivery of different amounts of protons to actuate soft matter and bioobjects. Control of ion, proton concentration gradients is suggested by assembly of soft matter on the semiconductor surface, e.g. polyelectrolytes by layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly. Prime questions are: (i) how many photons are needed to locally start a needed chemical reaction on the surface? (ii) what is the optimum LbL architecture to understand the basis of ion trapping and storage, the gradients under local irradiation? (iii) how to achieve reversible actuation, faster or slower, of different assemblies with controlled response times for bioapplications? In the project we focus for the first time on the possibility of efficient transformation of energy of electromagnetic irradiation into local ion gradients to actuate soft matter and biofilm formation, spatiotemporal guide cells, biomolecules behavior on the surface and light curing for hydrogel systems.

REFERENCES

[1] Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 55 (2016) 13001.
[2] Macromolecular Bioscience 16 (2016) 1422.
[3] Adv. Mater. Interfaces (2016) DOI: 10.1002/admi.201600282.
[4] ChemElectroChem 3 (2016) 1306.