Related papers: Cross-stream migration of active particles
It is often desirable to enhance the motility of active nano- or microscale swimmers such as, e.g., self-propelled Janus particles as agents of chemical reactions or weak sperm cells for better chances of successful fertilization. Here we…
We study different types of microswimmers moving in channels with varying cross section and thereby interacting hydrodynamically with the channel walls. Starting from the Smoluchowski equation for a dilute suspension, for which interactions…
Organisms often swim through density stratified fluids. In this Letter, we investigate the dynamics of small active particles swimming in density gradients and report theoretical evidence of taxis as a result of density stratification…
Catalytically active Janus particles suspended in solution create gradients in the chemical composition of the solution along their surfaces, as well as along any nearby container walls. The former leads to self-phoresis, while the latter…
We present a detailed theoretical study which demonstrates that electrokinetic effects can also play a role in the motion of metallic-insulator spherical Janus particles. Essential to our analysis is the identification of the fact that the…
Gold-capped Janus particles immersed in a near-critical binary mixture can be propelled using illumination. We employ a non-isothermal diffuse interface approach to investigate the self-propulsion mechanism of a single colloid. We attribute…
Populations of swimming microorganisms produce fluid motions that lead to dramatically enhanced diffusion of tracer particles. Using simulations of suspensions of swimming particles in a periodic domain, we capture this effect and show that…
Brownian transport of self-propelled overdamped microswimmers (like Janus particles) in a two-dimensional periodically compartmentalized channel is numerically investigated for different compartment geometries, boundary collisional…
Microswimmers typically operate in complex environments. In biological systems, often diverse species are simultaneously present and interact with each other. Here, we derive a (time-dependent) particle-scale statistical description, namely…
We study the orientation statistics of spheroidal, axisymmetric microswimmers, with shapes ranging from disks to rods, swimming in chaotic, moderately turbulent flows. Numerical simulations show that rod-like active particles preferentially…
To fully harness the potential of artificial active colloids, investigation of their response to various external stimuli including external flow is of great interest. Therefore, in this study, we perform experiments on SiO2-Pt Janus…
A new mechanism for micro-swimmer motion in an aquatic environment, which implies light-induced polarization perturbations as a motivation for its motion, is proposed. The mechanism assumes that natural light leads to an enhancement of the…
Shear-thinning viscosity is a non-Newtonian behaviour that active particles often encounter in biological fluids such as blood and mucus. The fundamental question of how this ubiquitous non-Newtonian rheology affects the propulsion of…
We use molecular dynamics simulations to study the dynamics of Janus particles, micro- or nanoparticles which are not spherically symmetric, in the uniform flow of a simple liquid. In particular we consider spheres with an asymmetry in the…
We study the effect of a nearby planar wall on the propulsion of a spherical phoretic micro-swimmer driven by reactions on its surface. An asymmetric coverage of catalysts on its surface which absorb reactants and generate products gives…
We numerically investigate the propelled motions of a Janus particle in a periodically phase-separating binary fluid mixture. In this study, the surface of the particle tail prefers one of the binary fluid components and the particle head…
We study two microswimmers consisting of a spherical rigid head and a passive elastic tail. In the first one the tail is clamped to the head, and the system oscillates under the action of an external torque. In the second one, head and tail…
Active particles affect their environment as much as the environment affects their active motion. Here, we present an experimental system where both can be simultaneously adjusted in situ using an external AC electric field. The environment…
Janus particles self-propel by generating local tangential concentration gradients along their surface. These gradients are present in a thin layer whose thickness is small compared to the particle size. Chemical asymmetry along the surface…
Self-propelled particles with hydrodynamic interactions (microswimmers) have previously been shown to produce long-range ordering phenomena. Many theoretical explanations for these collective phenomena are connected to instabilities in the…