Fariha Mahmood

Abstract Materials that compute—or process stimuli to generate a result output—are important in applications ranging from soft robotics to therapeutics. Here, we report a NAND gate based on the interactions of three self-trapped beams in a photoresponsive hydrogel. The beams self-trap by triggering localised contraction and corresponding refractive index changes (Δn) and communicate with each other through the interconnected hydrogel network.

Abstract Next-generation stimuli–responsive materials must be configured with local computational ability so that instead of a discrete on-off responsiveness, they sense, process and interact reciprocally with environmental stimuli. Because of their varied architectures and tunable responsiveness to a range of physical and chemical stimuli, polymers hold particular promise in the generation of such “materials that compute”.