Functional bio-inspired nanomachines from sticky colloids

Zoom in on one of your cells, and you will see an elaborately choreographed dance of tiny structures, proteins and other molecules each doing their job to enable the emergence of life. Viewed as a technology, these structures are overwhelmingly complex and intricately-assembled nanomachines that far surpass anything we can create synthetically. A highly promising route towards biologically-inspired nanomachines can be found in the interdisciplinary field of self-assembly, where scientists study how tiny building block objects come together on their own to form larger structures, guided only by their inherent interactions. Recent progress has enabled the creation of small synthetic structures with precise shapes, but in order to rival their biological counterparts, these structures must also exhibit functionality they must consume energy and perform tasks. However, before we can hope to achieve this, we must first understand the rules of the game, the minimal ingredients necessary for a nanomachine to exhibit complex functional behavior. This is challenging because the building blocks that compose these structures can be manipulated in many different ways, leading to a massive design space where one small change can have unknown cascading effects. Unlike biology, we do not have the luxury of billions of years of evolution to help us navigate this design space. Instead, this project will use the same numerical techniques used to create ChatGPT and other AI models to learn how to self-assemble functional nanomachines using exceedingly simple building blocks. Specifically, our nanomachines will learn how to mimic a variety of biological processes, including exchanging energy, walking unidirectionally along a track, and binding to and manipulating other structures. Together, this will teach us physical principles and design rules to make synthetic nanomachines dance, and will one day lead to new technologies with a level of complexity, hierarchy, and functionality found only in biology.