Related papers: Magnetocapillary self-assemblies: locomotion and m…
Active systems comprising micron-sized self-propelling units, also termed microswimmers, are promising candidates for the bottom-up assembly of small structures and reconfigurable materials. Here we leverage field-driven colloidal assembly…
We perform numerical simulations to study self-assembly of nanoparticles mediated by an elastic planar surface. We show how the nontrivial elastic response to deformations of these surfaces leads to anisotropic interactions between the…
Manufacturing new soft materials with specific optical, mechanical and magnetic properties is a significant challenge. Assembling and manipulating colloidal particles at fluid interfaces is a promising way to make such materials. We use…
We prove that by successively combining subassemblies, we can achieve sublinear construction times for "staged" assembly of micro-scale objects from a large number of tiny particles, for vast classes of shapes; this is a significant advance…
In many natural multi-layered composites, such as in the dactyl club of Stomatopods or the shell of bivalve mollusks, the defining functional and structural properties are determined by locally varying orientations of inorganic building…
Self-assembly is the underlying building principle of biological systems and represents a promising approach for the future of manufacturing, but the yields are often limited by undesirable metastable states. Meanwhile, annealing methods…
Molecular self-assembly is a well-known technique to create highly functional nanostructures on surfaces. Self-assembly on two-dimensional materials is a developing field and has already resulted in the discovery of several rich and…
The evolution of an initially prepared distribution of micron sized colloidal particles, trapped at a fluid interface and under the action of their mutual capillary attraction, is analyzed by using Brownian dynamics simulations. At a…
A wide range of experimental systems including gliding, swarming and swimming bacteria, in-vitro motility assays as well as shaken granular media are commonly described as self-propelled rods. Large ensembles of those entities display a…
Soft interfaces are ubiquitous in nature, governing quintessential hydrodynamics functions, like lubrication, stability and cargo transport. It is shown here how a magnetic force field at a magnetic-nonmagnetic fluid interface results in an…
Magnetic microrobots have been developed for navigating microscale environments by means of remote magnetic fields. However, limited propulsion speeds at small scales remain an issue in the maneuverability of these devices as magnetic force…
We report an experimental study on ion-exchange based modular micro-swimmers in low-salt water. Cationic ion-exchange particles and passive cargo particles assemble into self-propelling complexes, showing self-propulsion at speeds of…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
We combine experiments and theory to investigate the orientational dynamics of dipolar ellipsoids, which self-assemble into elongated ribbon-like structures due to the presence in each particle of a permanent magnetic moment perpendicular…
While the collective motion of active particles has been studied extensively, effective strategies to navigate particle swarms without external guidance remain elusive. We introduce a method to control the trajectories of two-dimensional…
Active fluids generate spontaneous, often chaotic mesoscale flows. Harnessing these flows to drive embedded soft materials into structures with controlled length scales and lifetimes is a key challenge at the interface between the fields of…
We outline a concept of self-assembled soft matter devices based on micro-fluidics, which use surfactant bilayer membranes as their main building blocks, arrested in geometric structures provided by top-down lithography. Membranes form…
Spontaneous low-frequency oscillations on the order of several hertz are the drivers of many crucial processes in nature. From bacterial swimming to mammal gaits, the conversion of static energy inputs into slowly oscillating electrical and…
Magnetically assembled superparamagnetic colloids have been exploited as fluid mixers, swimmers and delivery systems in several microscale applications. The encapsulation of such colloids in droplets may open new opportunities to build…
Recent work has identified persistent cluster states which were shown to be assembled and held together by hydrodynamic interactions alone [Driscoll \textit{et al.} (2017) Nature Physics, 13(4), 375]. These states were seen in systems of…