(692a) Emergent Properties from Architected Microgel Aggregates

In nature, collections of individual units can display remarkable emergent behavior, such as fire ant rafts forming ant rafts to survive floods. Herein, a platform for architecting microgels is presented that enables tunable emergent properties of microgel aggregates, such as injectability, macroporosity, and stimuli-response. By combining principles from jammed granular matter, stimuli-responsive polymers, and active matter, microgel aggregates can modulate fluid flow, dynamically link and de-link, and transition between solid- and liquid-like states on demand. This enables the study of “collective intelligence” to soft matter from assembly and actuation of the independent units, with potential applications in environmental remediation and injectable medical gels.