Related papers: Self-assembly of catalytically active colloidal mo…
DNA-mediated multivalent interactions between colloidal particles have been extensively applied for their ability to program bulk phase behaviour and dynamic processes. Exploiting the competition between different types of DNA-DNA bonds,…
Active colloids are microscopic particles, which self-propel through viscous fluids by converting energy extracted from their environment into directed motion. We first explain how articial microswimmers move forward by generating…
Motile living organisms routinely probe their surroundings to adapt in ever-evolving environments. Although synthetic microswimmers offer surrogates for self-propelled living entities, they often lack the complex feedback mechanisms that…
These lecture notes are designed to provide a brief introduction into the phenomenology of active matter and to present some of the analytical tools used to rationalize the emergent behavior of active systems. Such systems are made of…
Electrostatic interactions play an important role in numerous self-assembly phenomena, including colloidal aggregation. Although colloids typically have a dielectric constant that differs from the surrounding solvent, the effective…
Self-assembly of matter in solution generally relies on attractive interactions that overcome entropy and drive the formation of higher-order molecular and particulate structures. Such interactions play key roles in a variety of contexts,…
Molecular self-assembly on surfaces constitutes a powerful method for creating tailor-made surface structures with dedicated functionalities. Varying the intermolecular interactions allows for tuning the resulting molecular structures in a…
Over the past decade, extensive research into single-atom catalysts (SACs) has revealed that the catalytic behavior of metal adatoms is highly dependent on how they interact with their support. A strong dependence on the local coordination…
The assembly of colloidal cubic diamond is a challenging process since the shape and interaction parameters and the thermodynamic conditions where this structure is stable are elusive. The simultaneous use of shape-anisotropic particles and…
Active matter is a term encompassing particle-based assemblies with some form of self-propulsion, including certain biological systems as well as synthetic systems such as artificial colloidal swimmers, all of which can exhibit a remarkable…
Understanding the out-of-equilibrium properties of noisy microscale systems and the extent to which they can be modulated externally, is a crucial scientific and technological challenge. It holds the promise to unlock disruptive new…
Active nematics are out-of-equilibrium systems in which energy injection at the microscale drives emergent collective behaviors, from spontaneous flows to active turbulence. While the dynamics of these systems have been extensively studied,…
Recent studies aimed at investigating artificial analogs of bacterial colonies have shown that low-density suspensions of self-propelled particles confined in two dimensions can assemble into finite aggregates that merge and split, but have…
Biological systems exhibit large-scale self-organized dynamics and structures which enable organisms to perform the functions of life. The field of active matter strives to develop and understand microscopically-driven nonequilibrium…
Polar active particles constitute a wide class of synthetic colloids that are able to propel along a preferential direction, given by their polar axis. Here, we demonstrate a generic self-phoretic mechanism that leads to their spontaneous…
Active solids emerge from self-actuating components interacting with each other to form crystalline patterns. In equilibrium, commensurability underpins our understanding of nanoscale friction and particle-level dynamics of crystals.…
We consider a rigid assembly of two active Brownian particles, forming an active colloidal dimer, in a gradient of activity. We show analytically that depending on the relative orientation of the two particles the active dimer accumulates…
Designing microscopic and nanoscopic self-propelled particles and characterising their motion has become a major scientific challenge over the past decades. To this purpose, phoretic effects, namely propulsion mechanisms relying on local…
Active matter exhibits striking behaviour reminiscent of living matter and molecular fluids, and has promising applications in drug delivery or mixing at the micron scale. Active colloidal systems provide important models with simple and…
Suspended colloidal particles interacting chemically with a solute are able to self-propel by autophoretic motion when they are asymmetrically patterned (Janus colloids). Here we demonstrate that the chemical anisotropy is not a necessary…