Related papers: Self-assembly of Active Colloidal Molecules with D…
Self-assembly is the autonomous organization of components into patterns or structures: an essential ingredient of biology and a desired route to complex organization. At equilibrium, the structure is encoded through specific interactions,…
Various aspects of self-motility of chemically active colloids in Newtonian fluids can be captured by simple models for their chemical activity plus a phoretic slip hydrodynamic boundary condition on their surface. For particles of simple…
Steady structures originating from dynamic self-assembly have begun to show their advantages in new generation materials, and pose challenges to equilibrium self-assembly. In view of the important role of confinement in self-assembly, here,…
Population heterogeneity is ubiquitous among active living systems, but little is known about its role in determining their spatial organization and large-scale dynamics. Combining evidence from synthetic active fluids assembled from…
One of the challenges of self-assembling finite-sized colloidal aggregates with a sought morphology is the necessity of precisely sorting the position of the colloids at the microscopic scale to avoid the formation of off-target structures.…
Fabrication of diamond structures by self-assembly is a fundamental challenge in making three-dimensional photonic crystals. We simulate a system of model hard particles with attractive patches and show that they can self-assemble into a…
It has been shown that self-assembled chains of active colloidal particles can present sustained oscillations. These oscillations are possible because of the effective diffusiophoretic forces that mediate the interactions of colloids do not…
Anisotropy at the level of the inter-particle interaction provides the particles with specific instructions for the self-assembly of target structures. The ability to synthesize non-spherical colloids, together with the possibility of…
Colloids that attractively bond to only a few neighbors (e.g., patchy particles) can form equilibrium gels with distinctive dynamic properties that are stable in time. Here, we use a coarse-grained model to explore the dynamics of linked…
Active matter locally converts chemical energy into mechanical work and, for this reason, it provides new mechanisms of pattern formation. In particular, active gels made of protein motors and filaments are far-from-equilibrium systems that…
Melting of two-dimensional (2D) equilibrium crystals, from superconducting vortex lattices to colloidal structures, is a complex phenomenon characterized by the sequential loss of positional and orientational order. Whereas melting…
Field induced assembly of reconfigurable structures with complex hierarchical configurations has recently become an area of intense research with the promise for exciting applications in programmable self-assembly and nano/microstructure…
The spontaneous generation of electrical activity underpins a number of essential physiological processes, and is observed even in tissues where specialized pacemaker cells have not been identified. The emergence of periodic oscillations in…
Adding a non-adsorbing polymer to passive colloids induces an attraction between the particles via the `depletion' mechanism. High enough polymer concentrations lead to phase separation. We combine experiments, theory and simulations to…
Colloids dispersed in nematic liquid crystals form topological composites in which colloid-associated defects mediate interactions while adhering to fundamental topological constraints. Better realising the promise of such materials…
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)…
Although buckling is a prime route to achieve functionalization and synthesis of single colloids, buckling of colloidal structures---made up of multiple colloids---remains poorly studied. Here, we investigate the buckling of the simplest…
Colloidal probes immersed in an active bath have been found to behave like active particles themselves. Here, we use coarse-grained simulations to investigate the mechanisms behind this behavior. We find that the active motion of the…
Formation of highly ordered structures usually needs to overcome a high free-energy barrier that is greatly beyond the ability of thermodynamic fluctuation, such that the system would be easily trapped into a state with many defects and the…
Evaporating colloidal droplets have long been used as model systems to understand capillarity, interfacial transport, and particle assembly, most prominently through the coffee ring effect. In classical descriptions, suspended particles are…