Research
The science of ASMat offers new value to researchers around the world, bringing out previously dormant knowledge and new aspects of materials. Research Center for ASMat opens its doors worldwide as an international center for the development of future materials that will create harmony between humans and the environment for a sustainable society.
Mission
The mission of Research Center for Autonomous Systems Materialogy (ASMat) is to create materials that exhibit autonomous functions similar to those seen in living organisms. ASMat aims to establish a new scientific discipline in which systems theories in robotics are introduced into chemistry for materials design, control, and integration. We will identify differences between “chemically synthesized materials” and “living organisms as molecular assemblies” and bridge the large gaps between them. By fusing chemistry, materials science, life science, robotics, and information science, we will break away from conventional chemistry that has focused on thermodynamic equilibrium states and instead design “chemical programs” based on continuous chemical reaction networks with energy flows in nonequilibrium open states to achieve autonomous functions, thereby creating materials that behave as if they were alive.
Research project
Our goal is to create innovative materials that exhibit autonomous functions such as self-healing, self-replication, changeability adapted to circumstances, and autonomous motion, which are properties unique to living organisms. Learning from the chemical reaction networks of living organisms, we will construct continuous, nonequilibrium chemical reaction networks, which are incorporated into materials to realize autonomous functions. For this purpose, we will integrate the concepts of “molecular engine” and “molecular robotics.” The former introduces a continuous energy flow into chemical reactions to make them nonequilibrium, while the latter realizes information processing through molecular reactions. Then, we will pioneer methods for extracting more macroscopic motions and work from the chemical reaction networks; these methods enable soft materials to move through the use of molecules dynamically produced in the chemical reaction networks as triggers.
To realize materials that can work autonomously, we should recognize that the environment is fluctuating and explore rational methods to create materials that can accommodate changes in circumstances and respond to them flexibly. When the resulting materials can interact with the external environment by incorporating sensing and controllability, they can realize higher-order functions such as “the ability to convert external stimuli into work”, “the ability to process information, learn, and make decisions by themselves,” and “the ability to adapt, change, and replicate according to the environment and circumstances”.
