Related papers: Microswimmers in Patterned Environments
Understanding the collective actuation of microscopic structures driven by external fields can lead to the development of next-generation autonomous machines. With this goal in mind, we investigated light-induced collective motion of…
Computational scientists have investigated swimming performance across a multitude of different systems for decades. Most models depend on numerous model parameters and performance is sensitive to those parameters. In this paper, parameter…
We study the behaviour of interacting self-propelled particles, whose self-propulsion speed decreases with their local density. By combining direct simulations of the microscopic model with an analysis of the hydrodynamic equations obtained…
Guiding active microswimmers by external fields to requested target locations is a promising strategy to realize complex transport on the microscale. To this end, one possibility consists of attaching the microswimmers to orientable passive…
A key goal in developing molecular microrobots that mimic real-world animal dynamic behavior is to understand better the self-continuous progressive motion resulting from collective molecular transformation. This study reports, for the…
Microorganisms are rarely found in Nature swimming freely in an unbounded fluid. Instead, they typically encounter other organisms, hard walls, or deformable boundaries such as free interfaces or membranes. Hydrodynamic interactions between…
Flagellated microswimmers are ubiquitous in natural habitats. Understanding the hydrodynamic behavior of these cells is of paramount interest, owing to their applications in bio-medical engineering and disease spreading. Since the last two…
Self-propelled nanoparticles moving through liquids offer the possibility of creating advanced applications where such nanoswimmers can operate as artificial molecular-sized motors. Achieving control over the motion of nanoswimmers is a…
When tiny soft ferromagnetic particles are placed along a liquid interface and exposed to a vertical magnetic field, the balance between capillary attraction and magnetic repulsion leads to self-organization into well-defined patterns.…
The survival of many microorganisms, like \textit{Leptospira} or \textit{Spiroplasma} bacteria, can depend on their ability to navigate towards regions of favorable viscosity. While this ability, called viscotaxis, has been observed in…
Chiral active particles, or self-propelled circle swimmers, from sperm cells to asymmetric Janus colloids, form a rich set of patterns, which are different from those seen in linear swimmers. Such patterns have mainly been explored for…
Micromotors pushed by biological entities, like motile bacteria, constitute a fascinating way to convert chemical energy into mechanical work at the micrometer scale. Here we show, by using numerical simulations, that a properly designed…
Biofilms are spatially organized microorganism colonies embedded in a self-produced matrix, conferring to the microbial community resistance to environmental stresses. Motile bacteria have been observed swimming in the matrix of pathogenic…
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…
Many species of phytoplankton migrate vertically near the surface of the ocean, either in search of light or nutrients. These motile organisms are affected by ocean waves at the surface. We derive a set of wave-averaged equations to…
The current work studies the dynamics of a microswimmer in pressure-driven flow of a weakly viscoelastic fluid. Employing the second-order fluid model, we show that the self-propelling swimmer experiences a viscoelastic swimming lift in…
There is increasing evidence that mammalian cells not only crawl on substrates but can also swim in fluids. To elucidate the mechanisms of the onset of motility of cells in suspension, a model which couples actin and myosin kinetics to…
The persistent dynamics of active particles makes them explore extended portions of an obstacle's boundary during collisions. From impact to escape, the net applied forces depend on the curvature of the wall and increase in the presence of…
We present a deformation-dependent propulsion phenomenon for soft particles such as cells in microchannels. It is based on a broken time reversal symmetry generated by a fast forward and slow backward motion of a fluid which does not…
Swimming organisms in their natural habitat navigate through a wide array of geometries and chemical environments. Interaction with the boundaries is ubiquitous and can significantly modify the swimming characteristics of the organism as…