Living Droplets with Mesoscale Swimmers
Soft Condensed Matter
2026-01-30 v3 Biological Physics
Abstract
We study the activity of "living" droplets, which confine 1-6 mesoswimmers in 3D using a superhydrophobic substrate. The swimmers induce oscillations of the droplets at their inherent resonant frequencies, regardless of swimmer size and number. In contrast, the droplet oscillation amplitude is strongly affected by crowding, which we successfully model with a new scaling law and show that crowding reduces the speed of the swimmers. These fundamental living matter physics results reveal mechanisms for bio-inspired droplet actuation with implications for mesoscale robotics, fluidics, and sensing.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.20005,
title = {Living Droplets with Mesoscale Swimmers},
author = {L. Malik and N. Sharadhi and M. Lamminmäki and R. A. Lara and V. Jokinen and M. Backholm},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.20005},
year = {2026}
}