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Related papers: Self-motile colloidal particles: from directed pro…

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When a floating body is internally or externally vibrated, its self-generated wavefield can lead to steady propulsion along the interface. In this article, we review several related and recently discovered systems that leverage this…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2025-09-09 Daniel M. Harris , Jack-William Barotta

We study the effect of a nearby planar wall on the propulsion of a spherical phoretic micro-swimmer driven by reactions on its surface. An asymmetric coverage of catalysts on its surface which absorb reactants and generate products gives…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2017-06-08 Yahaya Ibrahim , Tanniemola B. Liverpool

A large variety of microorganisms produce molecules to communicate via complex signaling mechanisms such as quorum sensing and chemotaxis. The biological diversity is enormous, but synthetic inanimate colloidal microswimmers mimic…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2019-10-01 Jens Grauer , Hartmut Löwen , Avraham Be'er , Benno Liebchen

Molecular motors are essential to the living, they generate additional fluctuations that boost transport and assist assembly. Self-propelled colloids, that consume energy to move, hold similar potential for the man-made assembly of…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2019-09-18 Sophie Ramananarivo , Etienne Ducrot , Jeremie Palacci

Active drops emit/absorb chemical solutes, whose concentration gradients cause interfacial flows driving their own transport and the propulsion of the droplet. Such non-linear coupling enables active drops to achieve directed…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2022-12-01 Nikhil Desai , Sebastien Michelin

Recent progress in colloidal science has led to elaborate self-assembled structures whose complexity raises hopes for elaborating new materials. However, the throughputs are extremely low and consequently, the chance to produce materials of…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2014-09-16 Bingqing Shen , Joshua Ricouvier , Mathilde Reyssat , Florent Malloggi , Patrick Tabeling

Depending on their mechanism of self-propulsion, active particles can exhibit a time-dependent, often periodic, propulsion velocity. The precise propulsion velocity profile determines their mean square displacement and their effective…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-05-06 Arnau Jurado Romero , Carles Calero , Rossend Rey

We built and characterised a macroscopic self-assembly reactor that agitates magnetic, centimeter-sized particles with a turbulent water flow. By scaling up the self-assembly processes to the centimeter-scale, the characteristic time…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2018-02-14 T. A. G. Hageman , P. A. Löthman , M. Dirnberger , M. Elwenspoek , A. Manz , L. Abelmann

Self-propelled particles include both self-phoretic synthetic colloids and various micro-organisms. By continually consuming energy, they bypass the laws of equilibrium thermodynamics. These laws enforce the Boltzmann distribution in…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2015-04-15 Michael E. Cates , Julien Tailleur

We experimentally, numerically and analytically explore the diffusive transport of active colloidal particles with sensory delay, navigating motility landscapes in which the self-propulsion speed depends on space. We show how the transport…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-04-29 Adrià Garcés , Ueli Töpfer , Lucio Isa , Demian Levis , Ignacio Pagonabarraga

Background: This study is mainly motivated by the need of understanding how the diffusion behaviour of a biomolecule (or even of a larger object) is affected by other moving macromolecules, organelles, and so on, inside a living cell,…

Biological Physics · Physics 2016-01-15 Matteo Gori , Irene Donato , Elena Floriani , Ilaria Nardecchia , Marco Pettini

Many fascinating properties of biological active matter crucially depend on the capacity of constituting entities to perform directed motion, e.g., molecular motors transporting vesicles inside cells or bacteria searching for food. While…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-06-21 Pietro Luigi Muzzeddu , Édgar Roldán , Andrea Gambassi , Abhinav Sharma

A popular method to induce synthetic propulsion at the microscale is to use the forces created by surface-produced gas bubbles inside the asymmetric body of a catalytic swimmer (referred to in the literature as microrocket). Gas bubbles…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2018-03-29 Giacomo Gallino , Francois Gallaire , Eric Lauga , Sebastien Michelin

The emergence of structure through aggregation is a fascinating topic and of both fundamental and practical interest. Here we demonstrate that self-generated solvent flow can be used to generate long-range attractions on the colloidal…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2017-07-18 Ran Niu , Thomas Speck , Thomas Palberg

The transport equation of active motion is generalised to consider time-fractional dynamics for describing the anomalous diffusion of self-propelled particles observed in many different systems. In the present study, we consider an…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-10-27 Francisco J. Sevilla , Guillermo Chacón-Acosta , Trifce Sandev

For collections of particles in a thermal bath interacting with an asymmetric substrate, it is possible for a ratchet effect to occur where the particles undergo a net dc motion in response to an ac forcing. Ratchet effects have been…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-05-28 C. J. Olson Reichhardt , J. Drocco , T. Mai , M. B. Wan , C. Reichhardt

Various microorganisms and some mammalian cells are able to swim in viscous fluids by performing nonreciprocal body deformations, such as rotating attached flagella or by distorting their entire body. In order to perform chemotaxis, i.e. to…

Biological Physics · Physics 2021-05-06 Benedikt Hartl , Maximilian Hübl , Gerhard Kahl , Andreas Zöttl

Motility-induced phase separation (MIPS) is a well-studied nonequilibrium collective phenomenon observed in active particles. Recently, there has been growing interest in how coupling the self-propulsion of active particles to chemical…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-07-14 Euijoon Kwon , Yongjae Oh , Yongjoo Baek

When swimming at low Reynolds numbers, inertial effects are negligible and reciprocal movements cannot induce net motion. Instead, symmetry breaking is necessary to achieve net propulsion. Directed swimming can be supported by magnetic…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-03-31 Theo Lequy , Andreas M. Menzel

Collections of simple, self-propelled colloidal particles exhibit complex, emergent dynamical behavior, with promising applications in microrobotics. When confined within a deformable vesicle, self-propelled rods cluster and align,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-10-28 Sophie Y. Lee , Philipp W. A. Schönhöfer , Sharon C. Glotzer