Related papers: Remote control of self-assembled microswimmers
When swimming at low Reynolds numbers, inertial effects are negligible and reciprocal movements cannot induce net motion. Instead, symmetry breaking is necessary to achieve net propulsion. Directed swimming can be supported by magnetic…
This paper presents an overview and discussion of magnetocapillary self-assemblies. New results are presented, in particular concerning the possible development of future applications. These self-organizing structures possess the notable…
We investigate a self-organized swimmer at low Reynolds numbers. The microscopic swimmer is composed of three spheres that are connected by two identical active linker arms. Each linker arm contains molecular motors and elastic elements and…
When tiny soft ferromagnetic particles are placed along a liquid interface and exposed to a vertical magnetic field, the balance between capillary attraction and magnetic repulsion leads to self-organization into well-defined patterns.…
Recent experiments have shown that floating ferromagnetic beads, under the influence of an oscillating background magnetic field, can move along a liquid-air interface in a sustained periodic locomotion [Lumay et al., Soft Matter, 2013, 9,…
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…
The design of artificial microswimmers is often inspired by the strategies of natural microorganisms. Many of these creatures exploit the fact that elasticity breaks the time-reversal symmetry of motion at low Reynolds numbers, but this…
- In this paper, we focus on a variant of a 3-link magnetic microswimmer which consists of three rigid magnetized segments connected by two torsional springs. In particular, we assume that one of the springs is twisted so that the swimmer…
Magnetotaxis is a well known phenomenon in swimming microorganisms which sense magnetic fields e.g. by incorporating crystalline magnetosomes. In designing artificial active matter with tunable dynamics, external magnetic fields can provide…
In the study of microscopic flows, self-propulsion has been particularly topical in recent years, with the rise of miniature artificial swimmers as a new tool for flow control, low Reynolds number mixing, micromanipulation or even drug…
Unlike macroscopic swimmers, microswimmers operate in a low-Reynolds-number regime dominated by viscous forces. This paper investigates the controllability of a magnetic microswimmer composed of a spherical magnetic head and an elastic,…
We present an experiment where three mesoscopic soft ferromagnetic beads are placed onto a liquid surface and submitted to the influence of magnetic fields. A vertical magnetic field creates a repulsion which counterbalances the capillary…
We present a detailed numerical study of a microscopic artificial swimmer realized recently by Dreyfus et al. in experiments [R. Dreyfus et al., Nature 437, 862 (2005)]. It consists of an elastic filament composed of superparamagnetic…
Artificial microswimmers are a new technology with promising microfluidics and biomedical applications, such as directed cargo transport, microscale assembly, and targeted drug delivery. A fundamental barrier to realising this potential is…
Locomotion and transport of microorganisms in fluids is an essential aspect of life. Search for food, orientation toward light, spreading of off-spring, and the formation of colonies are only possible due to locomotion. Swimming at the…
Microrobots have the potential to impact many areas such as microsurgery, micromanipulation and minimally invasive sensing. Due to their small size, microrobots swim in a regime that is governed by low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. In this…
A recent promising technique for robotic micro-swimmers is to endow them with a magnetization and apply an external magnetic field to provoke their deformation. In this note we consider a simple planar micro-swimmer model made of two…
Guiding active microswimmers by external fields to requested target locations is a promising strategy to realize complex transport on the microscale. To this end, one possibility consists of attaching the microswimmers to orientable passive…
Micro-scale swimming robots have been envisaged for many medical applications such as targeted drug delivery, where the microrobot will be expected to navigate in a fluid through channels carrying a payload. Alternatively, in many cases,…
A system of ferromagnetic particles trapped at a liquid-liquid interface and subjected to a set of magnetic fields (magnetocapillary swimmers) is studied numerically using a hybrid method combining the pseudopotential lattice Boltzmann…