A central challenge in microfluidics is that flows are typically controlled by pumps and rigidly fabricated channels, which are difficult to reconfigure once built. In contrast, living cells achieve exquisite spatial and temporal control of fluid transport by generating forces at the molecular scale. Inspired by this principle, we developed a light-controlled “active matter programming language” that uses reconstituted motor–microtubule networks to directly sculpt micrometer-scale flows.

Our key innovation is a strategy to tame the intrinsic chaos of active matter and design a modular programming language. By patterning light at carefully chosen distances, we suppress unwanted nonlinear interactions and recover linear superposition, allowing complex flows to be designed predictably from simple modules. This is the first demonstration that active fluids, long regarded as uncontrollable, can be composed into reliable, programmable flow fields.

With this platform, we show that microscale flows can be dynamically “written” and reconfigured to perform canonical tasks such as transporting and separating cells, probing the rheology of polymers, dividing lipid vesicles, and mixing at low Reynolds number. Unlike conventional microfluidics, our system does not require pumps, valves, or fixed geometries; instead, it uses light as software to reprogram flows in real time.

This work establishes a new paradigm where biological active matter becomes an engineering substrate, bridging physics, biology, and microfluidics. By transforming chaotic cytoskeletal activity into a programmable toolkit, our approach opens avenues for adaptive lab-on-a-chip devices, precision manipulation of biological samples, and ultimately, bio-inspired strategies for materials design and diagnostics.

Publication & Highlights

  • 📄 F. Yang, S. Liu, H. J. Lee, R. Phillips and M. Thomson. “Dynamic Flow Control Through Active Matter Programming Language”. Nature Materials (2025). HTML
  • ✨ Highlighted by Nature Materials : “Illuminating active matter by harnessing light for modular flow control”. HTML
  • ✨ Highlighted by Nature Chemical Engineering: “Programming fluid flow with biological active matter”. HTML
  • ✨ Reported by Caltech News: “First Programming Language for Active Material”. HTML

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