pH Feedback Systems to Program Autonomous Self-Assembly and Material Lifecycles

pH-responsive systems have gained importance for the development of smart materials and for biomedical applications because they can switch between different states by simple acid/base triggers. However, such equilibrium systems lack the autonomous behavior that is so ubiquitous in living systems that self-regulate out of equilibrium. As a contribution to the emerging field of autonomous chemical systems, we have developed pH feedback systems (pH-FS) based on the coupling of acid- and base-producing steps in chemical reaction networks. The resulting autonomous nonlinear pH curves can be coupled with a variety of pH-sensitive building blocks to program the life cycles of the associated transient state at the level of self-assemblies and material systems. In this article, we discuss the different generations of such pH feedback systems, the principles of their coupling to self-assemblies with lifecycles and highlight emerging concepts for the design of autonomous functional materials. The specificity, robustness, and flexible operation of such pH-FS can also be used to realize chemical-structural and chemical-mechanical feedbacks that extend the behavior of such materials systems toward complex and functional life-like systems.