Research

One of the key features of living cells is their ability to harness external sources of energy and to convert it into fuel to support inner (e.g., metabolic-like) functions to maintain homeostasis. Inspired by these, we aim to fabricate micro-compartments with mechanisms for energy transduction from external sources in a dissipative manner. 

To achieve this, we incorporate nanoparticles capable of sensing force fields (such as electric or magnetic fields) within the compartment architecture. The advantage of force fields is that they offer high levels of spatiotemporal control and can be finely regulated in a contactless, switchable and reversible manner, which can be very useful to remotely control the compartments.

Energy transduction will not only activate inner functions within a sigle compartments (such as heating, spatial migration, etc.), but will drive changes in the mesoscale such as collective behaviours or interactions with the environment.