Related papers: Light Activated Self-Propelled Colloids
The motion of an artificial micro-scale swimmer that uses a chemical reaction catalyzed on its own surface to achieve autonomous propulsion is fully characterized experimentally. It is shown that at short times, it has a substantial…
The strong coupling between intense laser fields and valence electrons in molecules causes a distortion of the potential energy hypersurfaces which determine the motion of nuclei in a molecule and influences possible reaction pathways. The…
The progress of realizing colloidal structures mimicking natural forms of organization in condensed matter is inherently limited by the availability of suitable colloidal building blocks. To enable new forms of crystalline and…
Supersolidity - simultaneous superfluid flow and crystalline order - has been realized in quantum atomic systems but remains unexplored in purely photonic platforms operating at weak light-matter coupling. We predict a supersolid phase of…
Using Brownian dynamics computer simulations we show that a two-dimensional suspension of self-propelled ("active") colloidal particles crystallizes at sufficiently high densities. Compared to the equilibrium freezing of passive particles…
We demonstrate that the active thermocapillary stresses induced by multiple microbubbles offer simple routes to directed self-assembly and complex but controllable micromanipulation of mesoscopic colloidal particles embedded in a liquid.…
We study the dynamics of active Janus particles that self-propel in solution by light-activated catalytic decomposition of chemical "fuel." We develop an analytical model of a photo-active self-phoretic particle that accounts for…
Colloidal particles are considered ideal building blocks to produce materials with enhanced physical properties. The state-of-the-art techniques for synthesizing these particles provide control over shape, size, and directionality of the…
Active particles with their characteristic feature of self-propulsion are regarded as the simplest models for motility in living systems. The accumulation of active particles in low activity regions has led to the general belief that…
Custom-designed colloidal particles in an optical tweezers act as light-mills in a fluid. In particular, aqueous suspensions of capped colloids, in which half of the surface is covered with metal layers, are investigated. Due to their…
While active systems possess notable potential to form the foundation of new classes of autonomous materials, designing systems that can extract functional work from active surroundings has proven challenging. In this work, we extend these…
In solution, electrically like-charged particles can experience a strong and long-ranged attraction that leads to the formation of stable, slowly reorganizing clusters. The attractive force underpinning this spontaneous organization process…
In living cells, molecular motors create activity that enhances the diffusion of particles throughout the cytoplasm, and not just ones attached to the motors. We demonstrate initial steps toward creating artificial cells that mimic this…
Colloidal particles in a liquid crystal (LC) behave very differently from their counterparts in isotropic fluids. Elastic nature of the orientational order and surface anchoring of the director cause long-range anisotropic interactions and…
We study the self-assembly of branching-chain networks and crystals in a binary colloidal system with tunable interactions. The particle positions are extracted from microscope images and order parameters are extracted by image processing…
We study the dynamics of quasi-two-dimensional concentrated suspensions of colloidal particles in active gels by computer simulations. Remarkably, we find that activity induces a dynamic clustering of colloids even in the absence of any…
Active matter systems comprise self-propelled particles that move on a substrate while leaving chemical trails that influence other particles through chemotaxis (e.g., slime-depositing bacteria). Orientational chemotaxis manifests as a…
The diffusion of active microscopic organisms in complex environments plays an important role in a wide range of biological phenomena from cell colony growth to single organism transport. Here, we investigate theoretically and…
Exciting electrons in solids with intense light pulses offers the possibility of generating new states of matter through nonthermal means and controlling their macroscopic properties on femto- to picosecond timescales. One way to manipulate…
Functionalizing colloids with reactive DNA linkers is a versatile way of programming self-assembly. DNA selectivity provides direct control over colloid-colloid interactions allowing the engineering of structures such as complex crystals or…