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Abstract
Embedding synthetic materials with the ability to morph on-demand opens a new solution space for many engineering fields: from chemical computing platforms and drug carriers to passive sensors and soft robotic actuators. In such applications, more traditional components can be too large, heavy, non-biocompatible, or power intensive. Fortunately, nature offers a fascinating set of examples where function follows form. For instance, widely considered to lack traditional muscular and nervous systems, plants can exert autonomous movements in response to external stimuli. Alternatively, animal tissues are known to competently use a small number of choreographed localized cellular intercalations to influence their overall shape. More recently, synthetic bottom-up biology has been used in adjunction to precision technologies, like digital microfluidics, to recombine functional modules towards multifunctional synthetic tissues. The focus of this work is embedding structural and chemical adaptability into membranous droplet-based soft materials. This dissertation builds on previous work from the Droplet Interface Bilayer (DIB) technique which assembles structures of lipid membranes at the interface of aqueous microdroplets dispersed in an oil phase. This work studies the structural and chemical adaptation of DIB-based materials to external optical, electrical, mechanical, and even magnetic conditions carried through naturally inspired strategies of transmembrane communications and cellular intercalations. The first part of this work investigates the incorporation of magnetic fluids (ferrofluids) into DIB-based materials and its influences on the material properties, performance, and communication. Tissue-inspired morphing is then accomplished by applying magnetic fields in both experimental and modeling strategies, which generates intercalation events inspired from natural reconfiguration mechanisms observed in embryonic morphogenesis and gastrulation. The second part of this work examines novel strategies for enabling chemical-based adaptation through molecular communication in DIB-tissues akin to natural intracellular communication pathways. Molecular communication can be achieved by controlling the membranes’ permeability using photopolymerizable lipids. This directional permeability can be used in conjunction to the magnetically enabled adaptation to generate soft tissues whose chemical composition and functionality relate back to their shape yielding optimized response mechanisms that bridge the gap between biological systems and soft matter frameworks.