Related papers: Self-assembly of Active Colloidal Molecules with D…
Active systems contain self-propelled particles and can spontaneously self-organize into patterns making them attractive candidates for the self-assembly of smart soft materials. One key limitation of our present understanding of these…
Colloidal particles at complex fluid interfaces and within films assemble to form ordered structures with high degrees of symmetry via interactions that include capillarity, elasticity, and other fields like electrostatic charge. Here we…
Collective actuation in active solids, the spontaneous condensation of the dynamics on a few elastic modes, takes place whenever the deformations of the structure reorient the forces exerted by the active units composing, or embedded in,…
An important goal of self-assembly is to achieve a preprogrammed structure with high fidelity. Here, we control the valence of DNA-functionalized emulsions to make linear and branched model polymers, or `colloidomers'. The distribution of…
We report experimental and simulation studies of the structure of a monolayer of indented ("lock and key") colloids, on a planar surface. On adding a non-absorbing polymer with prescribed radius and volume fraction, depletion interactions…
Active solids consist of elastically coupled out-of-equilibrium units performing work. They are central to autonomous processes, such as locomotion, self-oscillations and rectification, in biological systems,designer materials and robotics.…
We demonstrate that active rotations in chemically signalling particles, such as autochemotactic {\it E. coli} close to walls, create a route for pattern formation based on a nonlinear yet deterministic instability mechanism. For slow…
Using molecular dynamics simulations, we show that an asymmetrically shaped nanoparticle in dilute solution possesses a spontaneously curved trajectory within finite time interval, instead of the generally expected random walk. This…
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…
Emergent behaviors occur in a vast array of systems across many scales, and are of fundamental physical importance because of the intrinsic difficulty in linking microscopic system properties to macroscopic behaviors. Here we study the…
Colloidal systems find important applications ranging from fabrication of photonic crystals to direct probing of phenomena typically encountered in atomic crystals and glasses. New applications - such as nanoantennas, plasmonic sensors, and…
Motivated by recent experiments on colloidal systems with competing attractive and repulsive interactions, we simulate a two-dimensional system of colloids with competing interactions that can undergo fragmentation. In the absence of any…
Abundant in nature, colloids also find increasingly important applications in science and technology, ranging from direct probing of kinetics in crystals and glasses to fabrication of third-generation quantum-dot solar cells. Because…
Many fascinating phenomena such as large-scale collective flows, enhanced fluid mixing and pattern formation have been observed in so-called active fluids, which are composed of particles that can absorb energy and dissipate it into the…
Colloidal particles dispersed in liquid crystals can form new materials with tunable elastic and electro-optic properties. In a periodic `blue phase' host, particles should template into colloidal crystals with potential uses in photonics,…
Microorganisms are able to overcome the thermal randomness of their surroundings by harvesting energy to navigate in viscous fluid environments. In a similar manner, synthetic colloidal microswimmers are capable of mimicking complex…
Control of physical behaviors of nematic colloids and colloidal crystals has been demonstrated by tuning particle shape, topology, chirality and surface charging. However, the capability of altering physical behaviors of such soft matter…
We demonstrate a simple method by which time-dependent interactions can be exploited to improve self-assembly in colloidal systems. We apply this method to two systems: a model colloid with short-ranged attractive potentials that undergoes…
Mutually repelling particles form spontaneously ordered clusters when forced into confinement. The clusters may adopt similar spatial arrangements even if the underlying particle interactions are contrastingly different. Here we demonstrate…
It is well known that periodic potentials can be used to induce freezing and melting in colloids. Here, we transfer this concept to active systems and find the emergence of a so-far unknown active matter phase in between the frozen…