Water filtration membranes morph like cells
Morphogenesis is nature’s way of building diverse structures and functions out of a fixed set of components. While nature is rich with examples of morphogenesis — cell differentiation, embryonic development and cytoskeleton formation, for example — research into the phenomenon in synthetic materials is scant. Researchers are taking a step forward using electron tomography, fluid dynamics theories and machine learning to watch soft polymers as the polymers learn from nature. …read more
