Reaction-transport coupling drives spatiotemporal organization in fuel-driven supramolecular polymerization
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866910270590287872 |
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| author | Singh, Akta Mukherjee, Nayana Mondal, Jagannath Ghosh, Pushpita |
| author_facet | Singh, Akta Mukherjee, Nayana Mondal, Jagannath Ghosh, Pushpita |
| contents | Chemically fueled supramolecular systems provide a versatile platform for generating nonequilibrium structures and dynamical instabilities, including chemical oscillations and traveling waves reminiscent of biological organization. However, a minimal mechanistic framework capable of capturing the emergence of such spatiotemporal order is still lacking. Here, we develop a minimal reaction-transport framework for fuel-driven supramolecular polymerization that couples activation-deactivation chemistry with cooperative assembly, fragmentation, and polymer length-dependent diffusion. The model captures autonomous oscillations arising through a Hopf bifurcation and demonstrates how temporal instabilities evolve into spatial self-organization upon inclusion of transport. We show that the nonlinear interplay between reaction kinetics and state-dependent mobility gives rise to traveling polymerization fronts, oscillatory wave dynamics, and complex spatiotemporal patterns. The propagating fronts exhibit near-ballistic dynamics, revealing a fundamentally nonequilibrium transport mechanism emerging from reactive feedback and dynamically evolving diffusivity. These findings establish a minimal physical framework connecting dissipative self-assembly, nonlinear transport, and active matter, while providing design principles for programmable supramolecular materials capable of autonomous spatiotemporal organization. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_15662 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Reaction-transport coupling drives spatiotemporal organization in fuel-driven supramolecular polymerization Singh, Akta Mukherjee, Nayana Mondal, Jagannath Ghosh, Pushpita Soft Condensed Matter Chemical Physics Chemically fueled supramolecular systems provide a versatile platform for generating nonequilibrium structures and dynamical instabilities, including chemical oscillations and traveling waves reminiscent of biological organization. However, a minimal mechanistic framework capable of capturing the emergence of such spatiotemporal order is still lacking. Here, we develop a minimal reaction-transport framework for fuel-driven supramolecular polymerization that couples activation-deactivation chemistry with cooperative assembly, fragmentation, and polymer length-dependent diffusion. The model captures autonomous oscillations arising through a Hopf bifurcation and demonstrates how temporal instabilities evolve into spatial self-organization upon inclusion of transport. We show that the nonlinear interplay between reaction kinetics and state-dependent mobility gives rise to traveling polymerization fronts, oscillatory wave dynamics, and complex spatiotemporal patterns. The propagating fronts exhibit near-ballistic dynamics, revealing a fundamentally nonequilibrium transport mechanism emerging from reactive feedback and dynamically evolving diffusivity. These findings establish a minimal physical framework connecting dissipative self-assembly, nonlinear transport, and active matter, while providing design principles for programmable supramolecular materials capable of autonomous spatiotemporal organization. |
| title | Reaction-transport coupling drives spatiotemporal organization in fuel-driven supramolecular polymerization |
| topic | Soft Condensed Matter Chemical Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15662 |