This 9 month project is sponsored as an EON Seed Grant, administered by the Earth Life-Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Technical University, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Its aim is to build on the progress made in the MICREAgents Project towards smart and autonomous electronic chemical systems by making further progress on and making more accessible to other scientific groups, working on complex self-organisation issues at the origin of life, the core technology of lablets and smart docking surfaces.
This project, just finished, was essential in enabling a continuation of the exciting developments in electronic chemistry for potential applications in the area of Origin of Life. The focus was on enabling new partners to benefit from these developments by making hardware, software and experimental developments more powerful, amenable and accessible to them. Hardware centered on the smart electronic docking station and the autonomous microscopic lablets with new extended and optimized versions of both being produced. Handoff to partners concentrated on the dock, but lablets were communicated and a new generation completed up to the final stage of dicing. Exciting achievements in terms of coupling electronics with chemistry, utilizing this novel hardware and software, were initiated in five areas:
i. classical pattern forming reaction diffusion systems such as BZ and FHN
ii. hybrid electronic-chemical reaction diffusion systems
iii. combinatorial functional chemical coatings of electrodes (e.g. for supercaps)
iv. microelectrode chemistry interacting with bacteria
v. reservoir computing using the smart dock
Partners:
U. Tokyo Ikegami, Takashi Group
U. Tokyo Toyota, Taro Group
ProtoLife Packard, Norman Group
Ruhr Univ. Bochum, AIS Oehm, Jürgen Group
Ruhr Univ. Bochum, BioMIP McCaskill, John Group