Nature Communications (Mar 2019)

Autonomous helical propagation of active toroids with mechanical action

  • Bowen Shen,
  • Youliang Zhu,
  • Yongju Kim,
  • Xiaobin Zhou,
  • Haonan Sun,
  • Zhongyuan Lu,
  • Myongsoo Lee

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09099-9
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 8

Abstract

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Self-assembly in nature is dynamic and exists in out-of-equilibrium state and thus systems have the ability to autonomously respond to environmental changes. Here the authors report that input of thermal energy can trigger fixed, artificial toroids to spontaneously nucleate helical growth.