The Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation has selected our project, Unveiling the fundamental path for the design of stimuli-responsive smart nanomaterials (GENESIS) for funding. 

GENESIS will explore the physics of stimuli-responsive nanomaterials, which reversibly adapt to external stimuli, switching between mutually exclusive configurations. These smart nanomaterials have attracted the attention of the research community for their revolutionary applications across disciplines, including drug delivery and wastewater treatments. Their ability to respond to environmental changes is controlled by the  interactions established at the nanoscopic scale between their building blocks (nanoparticles), which can alter the material’s structural properties and thus spark new functionalities at the macroscale. Despite the fact that stimuli-responsive nanomaterials have already been employed in a wide spectrum of disciplines, such as medicine, materials templating and robotics, our current understanding of their behaviour is still far from being complete. This is most likely due to the complexity arising from the above-mentioned relationship between interactions, structure and properties, being established at very small length and time scales and fully unfolding at macroscopic scales, determining the material’s performance and its technological potential. GENESIS will apply state-of-the-art numerical simulation, density functional theory and a wide spectrum of experimental techniques (microscopy, spectroscopy, light scattering, rheometry) to (1) investigate the microscopic origin of the interactions determining the phase behaviour of smart stimuli-responsive fluids according to the degree of softness of their constituent NPs; (2) unveil the mechanisms controlling the kinetics of their responsiveness; and (3) measure the impact of their stimuli-driven structural change on transport properties. 

GENESIS will run between September 2023 and August 2027 

Participating institutions: