Southern, E., Besnard, V., Lahaye, B. et al. (2 more authors) (2019) Catalytic self-folding of 2D structures through cascading magnet reactions. Royal Society Open Science, 6 (7). 182128. ISSN 2054-5703
Abstract
While thousands of proteins involved in development of the human body are capable of self-assembling in a distributed manner from merely 20 types of amino acid, macroscopic products that can be assembled spontaneously from ‘alive’ components remains an aspiration in engineering. To attain such a mechanism, a major challenge lies in understanding which attributes from the bio-molecular realm must be leveraged at the macro-scale. Inspired by protein folding, we present a centimetre-size 1D tile chain whose self-folding processes are directed by structure-embedded magnetic interactions, which can theoretically self-assemble into convex 2D structures of any size or shape without the aid of a global ‘controller’. Each tile holds two magnets contained in paths designed to control their interactions. Once initiated by a magnetic unit (termed Catalyst), the chain self-reconfigures by consuming magnetic potential energy stored between magnet pairs, until the final 2D structure is reached at an energetic minimum. Both simulation and experimental results are presented to illustrate the method’s efficacy on chains of arbitrary length. Results demonstrate the promise of a physically implemented, bottom-up, and scalable self-assembly method for novel 2D structure manufacturing, bridging the bio-molecular and mechanical realms.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Keywords: | self-assembly; self-folding; meta-material; magnetic interaction; magnetic catalysis; bottom-up manufacturing |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 24 Jun 2019 08:54 |
Last Modified: | 27 Jan 2020 16:49 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | The Royal Society |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1098/rsos.182128 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:147665 |