Active liquid crystals with computational function
The results, published on 23 February 2022 in Science Advances, are not likely to become transistors or computers right away, but the technique points the way towards devices with new functions in sensing, computing and robotics.
Dr Zhang Rui, an assistant professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, developed this theoretical approach while he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago.
Zhang and his colleagues show how the elementary building blocks of a circuit —gates, amplifiers, and conductors — could be created using liquid crystals formed from actin filaments.
This work builds on a paper Zhang and his colleagues published in Nature Materials in 2021, showing how topological defects in liquid crystals could be manipulated using lasers and guided in specific directions.
Now Zhang has taken a logical step further. “These topological defects have many of the characteristics of electrons in a circuit—we can move them long distances, amplify them, and shut or open their transport as in a transistor gate, which means we could use them for relatively sophisticated operations.”
The approach is likely to be useful in the field of soft robotics. Zhang and his team can imagine creating soft robots from materials which have their own computational and sensing function.
The results were published in Science Advances.
