Related papers: Synthetic Mechanochemical Molecular Swimmer
A molecular motor is made of either a single macromolecule or a macromolecular complex. Just like their macroscopic counterparts, molecular motors "transduce" input energy into mechanical work. All the nano-motors considered here operate…
Biological microswimmers often encounter deformable boundaries in physiological conditions; for instance, the viscoelastic walls of reproductive tract during migration of spermatozoa, or host tissue during early bacterial biofilm formation.…
The paper presents a two-phase hydrodynamic model for the numerical simulation of collective motion in a thin layer of active colloids containing spherical microswimmers. The model accounts for three fundamental mechanisms governing the…
Microswimmers typically operate in complex environments. In biological systems, often diverse species are simultaneously present and interact with each other. Here, we derive a (time-dependent) particle-scale statistical description, namely…
To explore and react to their environment, living micro-swimmers have developed sophisticated strategies for locomotion - in particular, motility with multiple gaits. To understand the physical principles associated with such a behavioural…
Microswimmers, and among them aspirant microrobots, generally have to cope with flows where viscous forces are dominant, characterized by a low Reynolds number ($Re$). This implies constraints on the possible sequences of body motion, which…
Micron-sized self-propelled (active) particles can be considered as model systems for characterizing more complex biological organisms like swimming bacteria or motile cells. We produce asymmetric microswimmers by soft lithography and study…
Micro-swimmers put into motion by a rotating magnetic field have provided interesting challenges both in engineering and in mathematical modelling. We study here the dynamics of a permanent-magnetic rigid body submitted to a…
In analogy to nanoscopic molecules that are composed of individual atoms, we consider an active "microswimmer molecule". It is built up from three individual magnetic colloidal microswimmers that are connected by harmonic springs and…
A comparison is made between conventional Michaelis-Menten kinetics and two models that take into account the duration of the conformational changes that take place at the molecular level during the catalytic cycle of a monomer. The models…
This study aims at finding a method for constructing molecular dynamics like models using the formalism of cellular automata for fast simulation of fluid dynamic systems (including compressible phenomena). In as much as the results…
Microswimmers, especially in theoretical treatments, are generally taken to be completely inertia-free, since inertial effects on their motion are typically small and assuming their absence simplifies the problem considerably. Yet in nature…
The locomotion and design of microswimmers are topical issues of current fundamental and applied research. In addition to numerous living and artificial active microswimmers, a passive microswimmer was identified only recently: a soft,…
Bacteria can exploit mechanics to display remarkable plasticity in response to locally changing physical and chemical conditions. Compliant structures play a striking role in their taxis behavior, specifically for navigation inside complex…
The optimal strategy for a microscopic swimmer to migrate across a linear shear flow is discussed. The two cases, in which the swimmer is located at large distance, and in the proximity of a solid wall, are taken into account. It is shown…
Constructing physical models of living cells and tissues is an extremely challenging task because of the high complexities of both intra- and intercellular processes. In addition, the force that a single cell generates vanishes in total due…
In a recent letter (Friedrich et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 109:138102, 2012), a minimal model swimmer was proposed that propels itself at low Reynolds numbers by a revolving motion of a pair of spheres. The motion of the two spheres can…
The design of artificial microswimmers has generated significant research interest in recent years, for promise in applications such as nanomotors and targeted drug-delivery. However, many current designs suffer from a common problem,…
A model of an autonomous three-sphere microswimmer is proposed by implementing a coupling effect between the two natural lengths of an elastic microswimmer. Such a coupling mechanism is motivated by the previous models for synchronization…
A simple model for the reaction-driven propulsion of a small device is proposed as a model for (part of) a molecular machine in aqueous media. Motion of the device is driven by an asymmetric distribution of reaction products. The propulsive…