Related papers: Hot Microswimmers
Inspired by the classical Kepler and Rutherford problem, we investigate an analogous set-up in the context of active microswimmers: the behavior of a deformable microswimmer in a swirl flow. First we identify new steady bound states in the…
The dynamics of a tracer molecule near a fluid membrane is investigated, with particular emphasis given to the interplay between the instantaneous position of the particle and membrane fluctuations. It is found that hydrodynamic…
Understanding the collective actuation of microscopic structures driven by external fields can lead to the development of next-generation autonomous machines. With this goal in mind, we investigated light-induced collective motion of…
Thermo-osmotic and related thermo-phoretic phenomena can be found in many situations from biology to colloid science, but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unexplored. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we measured the…
In addition to enabling movement towards environments with favourable living conditions, swimming by microorganisms has also been linked to enhanced mixing and improved nutrient uptake by their populations. Experimental studies have shown…
Overdamped Brownian motion of a self-propelled particle is studied by solving the Langevin equation analytically. On top of translational and rotational diffusion, in the context of the presented model, the "active" particle is driven along…
Self-diffusiophoretic particles exploit local concentration gradients of a solute species in order to self-propel at the micron scale. While an isolated chemically- and geometrically-isotropic particle cannot swim, we show that it can…
We study the local controllability properties of 2D and 3D bio-mimetic swimmers employing the change of their geometric shape to propel themselves in an incompressible fluid described by Navier-Stokes equations. It is assumed that swimmers'…
The conformational and dynamical properties of active Brownian polymers embedded in a fluid depend on the nature of the driving mechanism, e.g., self-propulsion or external actuation of the monomers. Implementations of self-propelled and…
Swimming microorganisms often have to propel in complex, non-Newtonian fluids. We carry out experiments with self-propelling helical swimmers driven by an externally rotating magnetic field in shear-thinning, inelastic fluids. Similarly to…
Fluctuating hydrodynamics based techniques have been developed in recent years for the simulation of Brownian motion of particles. These mesoscale simulation tools are viable approaches for problems where molecular dynamics simulations may…
Both natural and artificial small-scale swimmers may often self-propel in environments subject to complex geometrical constraints. While most past theoretical work on low-Reynolds number locomotion addressed idealised geometrical…
The diffusion of active microscopic organisms in complex environments plays an important role in a wide range of biological phenomena from cell colony growth to single organism transport. Here, we investigate theoretically and…
Heat engines transform thermal energy into useful work, operating in a cyclic manner. For centuries, they have played a key role in industrial and technological development. Historically, only gases and liquids have been used as working…
We present a numerical method that consistently implements thermal fluctuations and hydrodynamic interactions to the motion of Brownian particles dispersed in incompressible host fluids. In this method, the thermal fluctuations are…
We study the detention statistics of self-propelling droplet microswimmers attaching to microfluidic pillars. These droplets show negative autochemotaxis: they shed a persistent repulsive trail of spent fuel that biases them to detach from…
Micro/nano-scale propulsion has attracted considerable recent attention due to its promise for biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery. In this paper, we report on a new experimental design and theoretical modelling of…
We derive generalized Langevin equations for the translational and rotational motion of a heated Brownian particle from the fluctuating hydrodynamics of its non-isothermal solvent. The temperature gradient around the particle couples to the…
The current work studies the dynamics of a microswimmer in pressure-driven flow of a weakly viscoelastic fluid. Employing the second-order fluid model, we show that the self-propelling swimmer experiences a viscoelastic swimming lift in…
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.…