Digital Magnetic Handshake Materials, Structures, and Machines

Project Personnel

Itai Cohen

Principal Investigator

Paul McEuen

Michael Brenner

Funding Divisions

Division of Materials Research (DMR), Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET)

Learning to build smart, digital, and mechanically functional microscale objects could be as revolutionary as human-scale manufacturing. This grant will support research to develop a new way of meeting this challenging goal. It combines two technologies: modern magnetic information storage, which can create tiny magnets in any pattern desired, and ultrathin flexible materials that can bend in response to tiny forces. These will be combined to self-assemble intelligent, functional objects, machines, and materials. By designing the magnetic patterns/information, we will direct how strands connect to form complex structures and micron sized machines that can be controlled with external magnetic fields. 

Publications

Bifurcation instructed design of multistate machines
T. Yang, D. Hathcock, Y. Chen, P. L. McEuen, J. P. Sethna, I. Cohen, and I. Griniasty
8/14/2023
Programming interactions in magnetic handshake materials
C. X. Du, H. A. Zhang, T. G. Pearson, J. Ng, P. L. McEuen, I. Cohen, and M. P. Brenner
1/1/2022

Research Highlights

Storing Information with Magnetic Encoding
I. Cohen, P. McEuen (Cornell U.) and M. Brenner (Harvard U.)
3/20/2018
New Paradigm for the Design of Emergent Function
I. Cohen and P. McEuen (Cornell U.)
3/20/2018

Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF)