Related papers: Tuning the motility and directionality of self-pro…

Motile living organisms routinely probe their surroundings to adapt in ever-evolving environments. Although synthetic microswimmers offer surrogates for self-propelled living entities, they often lack the complex feedback mechanisms that…

Chemically powered self-propelled colloids generate a motor force by converting locally a source of energy into directed motion, a process that has been explored both in experiments and in computational models. The use of active colloids as…

Achieving control over the directionality of active colloids is essential for their use in practical applications such as cargo carriers in microfluidic devices. So far, guidance of spherical Janus colloids was mainly realized using…

Miniaturized, self-propelled locomotors use chemo-mechanical transduction mechanisms to convert fuel in the environment to autonomous motion. Recent experimental and theoretical studies demonstrate that these autonomous engines can…

Harnessing active matter requires strategies that break the directional symmetry of self-propelled motion without altering the propulsion mechanism itself. Here, we show that magnetically inert spherical active colloids can be steered…

The self-propelled motion of microscopic bodies immersed in a fluid medium is studied using molecular dynamics simulation. The advantage of the atomistic approach is that the detailed level of description allows complete freedom in…

Active colloids are microscopic particles, which self-propel through viscous fluids by converting energy extracted from their environment into directed motion. We first explain how articial microswimmers move forward by generating…

Colloidal spheres with a partial platinum surface coating perform auto-phoretic motion when suspended in hydrogen peroxide solution. We present a theoretical analysis of the self-propulsion velocity of these particles using a continuum…

The self-propulsion of artificial and biological microswimmers (i.e., active colloidal particles) has often been modelled by using a force and a torque entering into the overdamped equations for the Brownian motion of passive particles.…

Here we demonstrate a synthetic micro-engine, based on long-range controlled movement of colloidal particles, which is induced by a local catalytic reaction. The directed motion at long timescales was achieved by placing specially designed…

Autonomous and driven transport in chiral active fluids have been shown to exhibit features that cannot be accommodated within the classical formulation of fluid mechanics, due to the role of odd viscosity. We generalize the theory of…

For natural microswimmers, the interplay of swimming activity and external flow can promote robust motion, e.g. propulsion against ("upstream rheotaxis") or perpendicular to the direction of flow. These effects are generally attributed to…

Selective heating of a microparticle surface had been observed to cause its autonomous movement in a fluid medium due to self-generated temperature gradients. In this work, we theoretically investigate the response of such an…

Microscopic active droplets are able to swim autonomously in viscous flows: this puzzling feature stems from solute exchanges with the surrounding fluid via surface reactions or their spontaneous solubilisation, and the interfacial flows…

We experimentally investigate active motion of spherical Janus colloidal particles in a viscoelastic fluid. Self-propulsion is achieved by a local concentration gradient of a critical polymer mixture which is imposed by laser illumination.…

Self-propelled colloids constitute an important class of intrinsically non-equilibrium matter. Typically, such a particle moves ballistically at short times, but eventually changes its orientation, and displays random-walk behavior in the…

Synthetic microswimmers mimicking biological movements at the microscale have been developed in recent years. Actuating helical magnetic materials with a homogeneous rotating magnetic field is one of the most widespread techniques for…

Self-propelled particles can exhibit surprising non-equilibrium behaviors, and how they interact with obstacles or boundaries remains an important open problem. Here we show that chemically propelled micro-rods can be captured, with little…

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…

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…