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Understanding mixing and transport of passive scalars in active fluids is important to many natural (e.g. algal blooms) and industrial (e.g. biofuel, vaccine production) processes. Here, we study the mixing of a passive scalar (dye) in…
Biological systems exploit self-assembly to create complex structures whose arrangements are finely controlled from molecular to mesoscopic level. Herein we report an example of using fully synthetic systems that mimic two levels of…
Many forms of programmable matter have been proposed for various tasks. We use an abstract model of self-organizing particle systems for programmable matter which could be used for a variety of applications, including smart paint and…
Active crystals are highly ordered structures that emerge from the self-organization of motile objects, and have been widely studied in synthetic and bacterial active matter. Whether collective crystallization phenomena can occur in groups…
Curved structures in soft matter and biological systems commonly emerge as a result of self-assembly processes where building blocks aggregate in a controlled manner, giving rise to specific system structure and properties. Learning how to…
Bacteria can adjust the structure of colonies and biofilms to enhance their survival rate under external stress. Here, we explore the link between bacterial interaction forces and colony structure. We show that the activity of extracellular…
Active matter exhibits remarkable collective behavior in which flows, continuously generated by active particles, are intertwined with the orientational order of these particles. The relationship remains poorly understood as the activity…
Active nematics are the nonequilibrium analog of passive liquid crystals in which anisotropic units consume free energy to drive emergent behavior. Similar to liquid crystal (LC) molecules in displays, ordering and dynamics in active…
Flexibility governs the many properties of materials and is crucial for the function of proteins and biopolymers. However, how the self-assembly of flexibly bonded particles can lead to larger structures with global reconfigurability is…
Bacterial colonies composed of elongated cells form active nematic fluids that spontaneously self-organise into ordered domains of aligned cells and exhibit self-generated chaotic flows powered by cell growth. While their dynamics have…
Clustering passive particles by active agents is a promising route for fabrication of colloidal structures. Here, we report the dynamic clustering of micrometric beads in a suspension of motile bacteria. We characterize the coarsening…
Bacteria such as Escherichia coli (E. coli) exhibit biased motion if kept in a spatially non-uniform chemical environment. Here, we bring out unique time-dependent characteristics of bacterial chemotaxis, in response to a diffusing spatial…
We study the self-assembly behaviour of patchy particles with `protein-like' interactions that can be considered as a minimal model for the assembly of viral capsids and other shell-like protein complexes. We thoroughly explore the…
The algorithmic self-assembly of shapes has been considered in several models of self-assembly. For the problem of \emph{shape construction}, we consider an extended version of the Two-Handed Tile Assembly Model (2HAM), which contains…
Patterns generated by a colloidal suspension of nanospheres drying on a frictional substrate are studied by experiments and computer simulations. The obtained two-dimensional self-assembled structures are commonly used for nanosphere…
Photonic materials with angular independent structural colour are highly desirable because they offer the broad viewing angles required for application as colorants in paints, cosmetics, textiles or displays. However, they are challenging…
Micro-robots for, e.g., biomedical applications, need to be equipped with motility strategies that enable them to navigate through complex environments. Inspired by biological microorganisms we recreate motility patterns such as…
We consider a lattice model for amphiphiles in a solvent with molecules chemically similar to one part of the amphiphilic molecule. The dependence of the interaction potential on orientation of the amphiphilic molecules is taken into…
Bacteria can adjust their swimming behaviour in response to chemical variations, a phenomenon known as chemotaxis. This process is characterised by a drift velocity that depends non-linearly on the concentration of chemical species and its…
In equilibrium, the physical properties of matter are set by the interactions between the constituents. In contrast, the energy input of the individual components controls the behavior of synthetic or living active matter. Great progress…