Related papers: Living Liquid Crystals
Active colloids in liquid crystals (ACLCs) is an active matter with qualitatively new facets of behavior as compared to active matter that becomes isotropic when relaxed into an equilibrium state. We discuss two classes of ACLCs: (i)…
We study living liquid crystals (LLCs), which are an amalgam of nematic liquid crystals (LCs) and active matter (AM). These LLCs are placed in contact with surfaces which impose planar/homeotropic boundary conditions on the director field…
Active crystals are highly ordered structures that emerge from the self-organization of motile objects, and have been widely studied in synthetic and bacterial active matter. Whether collective crystallization phenomena can occur in groups…
Swimming bacteria in passive nematics in the form of lyotropic liquid crystals are defined as a new class of active matter known as living liquid crystals in recent studies. It has also been shown that liquid crystal solutions are promising…
Self-propelled bacteria are marvels of nature with a potential to power dynamic materials and microsystems of the future. The challenge is in commanding their chaotic behavior. By dispersing swimming Bacillus subtilis in a…
Active matter comprised of self-propelled interacting units holds a major promise for extraction of useful work from its seemingly chaotic out-of-equilibrium dynamics. Streamlining active matter to produce work is especially important at…
Natural bacterial habitats are often complex fluids with viscoelastic and anisotropic responses to stress; for example, they can take the form of liquid crystals (LCs), with elongated microscopic constituents that collectively align while…
Bacterial assemblies exhibit rich collective behaviors that control their biological functions, making them a relevant object of study from an active matter physics perspective. Dense bacterial suspensions self-organize into distinct…
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…
Dynamics of small particles, both living such as swimming bacteria and inanimate, such as colloidal spheres, has fascinated scientists for centuries. If one could learn how to control and streamline their chaotic motion, that would open…
Active nematics are materials composed of mobile, elongated particles that can transform energy from the environment into a mechanical motion. Current experimental realizations of the active nematics are of biological origin and include…
Microorganisms often encounter anisotropy, for example in mucus and biofilms. We study how anisotropy and elasticity of the ambient fluid affects the speed of a swimming microorganism with a prescribed stroke. Motivated by recent…
Real-life bacteria often swim in complex fluids, but our understanding of the interactions between bacteria and complex surroundings is still evolving. In this work, rod-like \textit{Bacillus subtilis} swims in a quasi-2D environment with…
The swimming behavior of bacteria and other microorganisms is sensitive to the physical properties of the fluid in which they swim. Mucus, biofilms, and artificial liquid-crystalline solutions are all examples of fluids with some degree of…
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…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is important across biology, physics, and materials science. Although usually studied at equilibrium, active components - such as motor proteins, enzymes, and synthetic microswimmers - are increasingly…
It has been shown that an anisotropic liquid crystalline (LC) environment can be used to guide the self-propulsion dynamics of dispersed microswimmers, such as bacteria. This type of composite system is named "living nematic" (LN). In the…
We review recent work on active colloids or swimmers, such as self-propelled microorganisms, phoretic colloidal particles, and artificial micro-robotic systems, moving in fluid-like environments. These environments can be water-like and…
Swimmers and self-propelled particles are physical models for the collective behaviour and motility of a wide variety of living systems, such as bacteria colonies, bird flocks and fish schools. Such artificial active materials are amenable…
Membraneless droplets or liquid condensates formed via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) play a pivotal role in cell biology and hold potential for biomedical engineering. While membraneless droplets are often studied in the context of…