Related papers: Can Magnetic Multilayers Propel Artificial Microsw…
The microaerophilic magnetotactic bacterium Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense swims along magnetic field lines using a single flagellum at each cell pole. It is believed that this magnetotactic behavior enables cells to seek optimal oxygen…
Biological microswimmers such as bacteria and sperm cells often encounter complex biological fluid environments. Here we use the well-known squirmer microswimmer model to show the importance of the local fluid microstructure and…
The dynamics and motion of multi-ciliated microswimmers with a spherical body and a small number N (with 5 < N < 60) of cilia with length comparable to the body radius, is investigated by mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations. A metachronal…
We demonstrate with experiments and simulations how microscopic self-propelled particles navigate through environments presenting complex spatial features, which mimic the conditions inside cells, living organisms and future lab-on-a-chip…
In this work we consider the following question: given a mechanical microswimming mechanism, does increased deformability of the swimmer body hinder or promote the motility of the swimmer? To answer this we study a microswimmer model…
Biological microswimmers often encounter deformable boundaries in physiological conditions; for instance, the viscoelastic walls of reproductive tract during migration of spermatozoa, or host tissue during early bacterial biofilm formation.…
Motivated by the swimming of sperm in the non-Newtonian fluids of the female mammalian reproductive tract, we examine the swimming of filaments in the nonlinear viscoelastic Upper Convected Maxwell model. We obtain the swimming velocity and…
Ciliated microswimmers and flagellated bacteria alter their swimming trajectories to follow the direction of an applied electric field exhibiting electrotaxis. Both for matters of application and physical modelling, it is instructive to…
We employ three numerical methods to explore the motion of low Reynolds number swimmers, modeling the hydrodynamic interactions by means of the Oseen tensor approximation, lattice Boltzmann simulations and multiparticle collision dynamics.…
The field of active matter in general and microswimming in particular has experienced a rapid and ongoing expansion over the last decade. A particular interesting aspect is provided by artificial autonomous microswimmers constructed from…
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…
Chiral active particles, or self-propelled circle swimmers, from sperm cells to asymmetric Janus colloids, form a rich set of patterns, which are different from those seen in linear swimmers. Such patterns have mainly been explored for…
Herein, self-healing small-scale swimmers capable of autonomous propulsion and on-the-fly structural recovery are described. The new strategy instantaneously restores the functionality of the swimmer after it has suffered severe damage.…
In analogy to nanoscopic molecules that are composed of individual atoms, we consider an active "microswimmer molecule". It is built up from three individual magnetic colloidal microswimmers that are connected by harmonic springs and…
Actuating periodically an elastic filament in a viscous liquid generally breaks the constraints of Purcell's scallop theorem, resulting in the generation of a net propulsive force. This observation suggests a method to design simple…
The motion of microswimmers in complex flows is ruled by the interplay between swimmer propulsion and the dynamics induced by the fluid velocity field. Here we study the motion of a chiral microswimmer whose propulsion is provided by the…
Propulsion at microscopic scales is often achieved through propagating traveling waves along hair-like organelles called flagella. Taylor's two-dimensional swimming sheet model is frequently used to provide insight into problems of…
We experimentally and theoretically study the dynamics of a low-Reynolds number helical swimmer moving across viscosity gradients. Experimentally, a double-layer viscosity is generated by superposing two miscible fluids with similar…
Robotic swimmers are currently a subject of extensive research and development for several underwater applications. Clever design and planning must rely on simple theoretical models that account for the swimmer's hydrodynamics in order to…
Synthetic microswimmers offer models for cell motility and their tunability makes them promising candidates for biomedical applications. Here we measure the acoustic propulsion of bimetallic micro-rods that, when trapped at the nodal plane…