Reactive nanomessengers for artificial chemical communication.

Artificial chemical communication is an emerging field of study driven by the need of exchanging information in delicate environments where standard procedures based on electromagnetic waves cannot be used. A non-synchronized artificial chemical communication system, based on a new modulation technique, namely reaction shift keying (RSK), is presented. The RSK implies that the quenchers are injected into the transmitter, the chemical messenger reacts and a chemically modified messenger travels towards the receiver. Encoding of "0" is obtained by means of the emission of a messenger that reaches the receiver once chemically modified. To encode the value "1", the messenger is not subjected to chemical reaction. Fluorescent carbon nanoparticle molecular messengers that exploit the reaction with Cu(ii) ions for signal modulation were synthesized. A prototypal RSK modulated chemical communication system is developed, from simulations of the communication platform to an operating prototypal system.