What if matter could sustain itself — without being alive?

Living things maintain themselves. Crystals are ordered but passive. What lies between?

We are designing a minimal chemical system — built from iron sulfide minerals — that maintains its own boundary, drives its own metabolism, and persists without being alive.

This is Third Matter: organized, self-sustaining, but not biological. A new category of material organization that could not arise naturally — engineered at the boundary between chemistry and life.

At the heart of Third Matter is the G3c membrane — a two-chamber system separated by a layered iron sulfide stack:

• Pentlandite (outer layer): blocks protons (E_a = 1.43 eV), conducts electrons (σ = 10–100 S/cm)
• Mackinawite (inner layer): catalyzes CO₂ → formate at just 23 mV overpotential
• The pH gradient (2.5 → 8.5) drives spontaneous electrochemistry — no external power needed

Igor Morozov — independent researcher, Ukraine.
 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-3863-1747

Graduated with distinction from Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics (Computer Engineering; Electronics & Process Engineer, 1996). His working career then went into software engineering rather than the cleanroom — and years later it was AI that became the bridge back: a way to bring that semiconductor-era grounding in thin films and layered architectures, together with a programmer's toolkit, to the mineral membranes at the heart of this project. A first research project — citizen science at the frontier.

A semiconductor engineer's perspective on designing life-like matter.

This project is built entirely through human–AI collaboration using Claude (Anthropic). Every model, every literature review, every calculation — a partnership between human intuition and machine reasoning.

We are looking for collaborators: