Related papers: Self-assembly of catalytically active colloidal mo…

A novel type of hybrid colloids is presented, based on the association of several polymeric systems and ferrofluids. On the one hand, we use inorganic nanoparticles made of magnetic iron oxide prepared at the LI2C, which response to a…

We show that chiral symmetry can be broken spontaneously in one-component systems with isotropic interactions, i.e. many-particle systems having maximal a priori symmetry. This is achieved by designing isotropic potentials that lead to…

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…

Colloidal particles are not simple rigid particles, in general an isolated particle is a system with many degrees of freedom in its own right, e.g., the counterions around a charged colloidal particle.The behaviour of model colloidal…

The cell cortex, a thin film of active material assembled below the cell membrane, plays a key role in cellular symmetry breaking processes such as cell polarity establishment and cell division. Here, we present a minimal model of the…

The motion of active colloids is generally achieved through their anisotropy, as exemplified by Janus colloids. Recently, there was a growing interest in the propulsion of isotropic colloids, which requires some local symmetry breaking.…

Phoretic colloids self-propel thanks to surface flows generated in response to surface gradients (thermal, electrical, or chemical), that are self-induced and/or generated by other particles. Here we present a scalable and versatile…

Active fluids generate spontaneous, often chaotic mesoscale flows. Harnessing these flows to drive embedded soft materials into structures with controlled length scales and lifetimes is a key challenge at the interface between the fields of…

The creation of synthetic systems that emulate the defining properties of living matter, such as motility, gradient-sensing, signalling and replication, is a grand challenge of biomimetics. Such imitations of life crucially contain active…

We examine a mechanism of locomotion of active particles whose surface is uniformly coated with mobile enzymes. The enzymes catalyze a reaction that drives phoretic flows but their homogeneous distribution forbids locomotion by symmetry. We…

We investigate the equilibrium properties of a colloidal solution in contact with a soft interface. As a result of symmetry breaking, surface effects are generally prevailing in confined colloidal systems. In this Letter, particular…

Colloidal aggregation could be implemented in various fields ranging from purely colloidal thermodynamics to protein interactions, their stability, and maybe folding. Indeed, colloidal aggregation is closely linked to the so-called…

Colloids that interact via a short-range attraction serve as the primary building blocks for a broad range of self-assembled materials. However, one of the well-known drawbacks to this strategy is that these building blocks rapidly and…

Catalytically active particles suspended in a liquid can move due to self-phoresis by generating solute gradients via chemical reactions of the solvent occurring at parts of their surface. Such particles can be used as carriers at the…

Minimal models of active Brownian colloids consisting of self-propelled spherical particles with purely repulsive interactions have recently been identified as excellent quantitative testing grounds for theories of active matter and have…

We introduce a simple model of heterogeneous catalysis on a disordered surface which consists of two types of randomly distributed sites with different adsorption rates. Disorder can create a reactive steady state in situations where the…

Magnetic nanoparticles in a colloidal solution self-assemble in various aligned structures, which has a profound influence on the flow behavior. However, the precise role of the microstructure in the development of the rheological response…

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…

Colloids with patchy metal coating under laser irradiation could act as local sources of heat due to the absorption of light. While for asymmetric colloids this could induce self-propulsion, it also leads to the generation of a slowly…

Charged colloidal particles propel themselves through asymmetric fluxes of chemically generated ions on their surface. We show that asymmetry in the surface charge distribution introduces a new mode of self-phoretic motion for chemically…