Related papers: Self-assembled granular walkers
Self-assembly is the mechanism that controls the formation of well defined structures from disordered pre-existing parts. Despite the importance of self-assembly as a manufacturing method and the increasingly large number of experimental…
The interaction between a flexible polymer in good solvent and smaller associating solute molecules such as amphiphiles (surfactants) is considered theoretically. Attractive correlations, induced in the polymer because of the interaction,…
Self-assembly is a ubiquitous process in synthetic and biological systems, broadly defined as the spontaneous organization of multiple subunits (e.g. macromolecules, particles) into ordered multi-unit structures. The vast majority of…
In order to keep their cohesiveness during locomotion gregarious animals must make collective decisions. Many species boast complex societies with multiple levels of communities. A common case is when two dominant levels exist, one…
We present a new simulation technique to study systems of polymers functionalized by reactive sites that bind/unbind forming reversible linkages. Functionalized polymers feature self-assembly and responsive properties that are unmatched by…
We study a model of interacting random walkers that proposes a simple mechanism for the emergence of cooperation in group of individuals. Each individual, represented by a Brownian particle, experiences an interaction produced by the local…
Thermal ratchets can extract useful work from random fluctuations. This is common in the molecular scale, such as motor proteins, and has also been used to achieve directional transport in microfluidic devices. In this work, we use the…
We investigate a self-organized swimmer at low Reynolds numbers. The microscopic swimmer is composed of three spheres that are connected by two identical active linker arms. Each linker arm contains molecular motors and elastic elements and…
The fabrication of versatile building blocks that are reliably self-assemble into desired ordered and disordered phases is amongst the hottest topics in contemporary material science. To this end, microscopic units of varying complexity,…
Steady structures originating from dynamic self-assembly have begun to show their advantages in new generation materials, and pose challenges to equilibrium self-assembly. In view of the important role of confinement in self-assembly, here,…
In the self-assembly process which drives the formation of cellular membranes, micelles, and capsids, a collection of separated subunits spontaneously binds together to form functional and more ordered structures. In this work, we study the…
Polypeptides can self-assemble into hierarchically organized fibrils consisting of a stack of individually folded polypeptides driven together by hydrophobic interaction. Using a coarse grained model, we systematically studied this…
Robotic materials are multi-robot systems formulated to leverage the low-order computation and actuation of the constituents to manipulate the high-order behavior of the entire material. We study the behaviors of ensembles composed of smart…
Animals achieve robust locomotion by offloading regulation from the brain to physical couplings within the body. In contrast, locomotion in artificial systems often depends on centralized processors. We introduce a rapid and autonomous…
Natural flocks (aligned) and swarms (non-aligned) both exhibit features of near-criticality, challenging their treatment as two ends of the same phase transition. We present a model for the aggregation of active individuals, in which their…
Non-equilibrium transport of particles embedded in a liquid crystal host can, by cooling through a phase transition, be exploited to create a remarkable variety of structures including shells, foams, and gels. Due to the complexity of the…
With exquisite precision and reproducibility, cells orchestrate the cooperative action of thousands of nanometer-sized molecular motors to carry out mechanical tasks at much larger length scales, such as cell motility, division and…
Active particles such as swimming bacteria or self-propelled colloids are known to spontaneously organize into fascinating large-scale dynamic structures. The emergence of these collective states from the motility pattern of the individual…
Although buckling is a prime route to achieve functionalization and synthesis of single colloids, buckling of colloidal structures---made up of multiple colloids---remains poorly studied. Here, we investigate the buckling of the simplest…
The surprising recent discoveries of quasicrystals and their approximants in soft matter systems poses the intriguing possibility that these structures can be realized in a broad range of nano- and micro-scale assemblies. It has been…