Related papers: Hot Microswimmers
Phoretic swimmers are a class of artificial active particles that has received significant attention in recent years. By making use of self-generated gradients (e.g. in temperature, electric potential or some chemical product) phoretic…
Symmetry breaking is essential for biological microswimmers to achieve locomotion in viscous environments. Such asymmetry in the swimming mechanism enables the generation of directional forces that overcome fluid resistance, leading to…
Guiding active microswimmers by external fields to requested target locations is a promising strategy to realize complex transport on the microscale. To this end, one possibility consists of attaching the microswimmers to orientable passive…
Microorganisms living in microfluidic environments often form multi-species swarms, where they can leverage collective motions to achieve enhanced transport and spreading. Nevertheless, there is a general lack of physical understandings of…
In the paper by Franosch et al., Nature 478, 85 (2011), the positional fluctuations of Brownian microspheres in fluids were studied by confining the particles in an optical trap. Experimental access to short timescales has revealed a…
Biological microswimmers such as bacteria and sperm cells often encounter complex biological fluid environments. Here we use the well-known squirmer microswimmer model to show the importance of the local fluid microstructure and…
We present a detailed numerical study of a microscopic artificial swimmer realized recently by Dreyfus et al. in experiments [R. Dreyfus et al., Nature 437, 862 (2005)]. It consists of an elastic filament composed of superparamagnetic…
Fission and fusion processes of particles clusters occur in many areas of physics and chemistry from subnuclear to astronomic length scales. Here we study fission and fusion of magnetic microswimmer clusters as governed by their…
Biological microswimmers alter their motility in complex corner geometries, facilitating their survival. However, the dynamical features of low-Reynolds-number swimming at corners remain undefined. Here, we use active droplet microswimmers…
Microswimmers play an important role in shaping the world around us. The squirmer is a simple model for microswimmer whose cilia oscillations on its spherical surface induce an effective slip velocity to propel itself. The rapid development…
Active systems comprised of self-propelled units show fascinating transitions from Brownian-like dynamics to collective coherent motion. Swirling of swimming bacteria is a spectacular example. This study demonstrates that a nematic liquid…
Biological microswimmers often inhabit a porous or crowded environment such as soil. In order to understand how such a complex environment influences their spreading, we numerically study non-interacting active Brownian particles (ABPs) in…
Microorganisms are rarely found in Nature swimming freely in an unbounded fluid. Instead, they typically encounter other organisms, hard walls, or deformable boundaries such as free interfaces or membranes. Hydrodynamic interactions between…
We study the three-dimensional dynamics of a spherical microswimmer in cylindrical Poiseuille flow which can be mapped onto a Hamiltonian system. Swinging and tumbling trajectories are identified. In 2D they are equivalent to oscillating…
When a floating body is internally or externally vibrated, its self-generated wavefield can lead to steady propulsion along the interface. In this article, we review several related and recently discovered systems that leverage this…
To explore and react to their environment, living micro-swimmers have developed sophisticated strategies for locomotion - in particular, motility with multiple gaits. To understand the physical principles associated with such a behavioural…
The swimming trajectories of self-propelled organisms or synthetic devices in a viscous fluid can be altered by hydrodynamic interactions with nearby boundaries. We explore a multipole description of swimming bodies and provide a general…
Design strategies to assemble dissipative building blocks are essential to create novel and smart materials and machines. We recently demonstrated the hierarchical self-assembly of phoretic microswimmers into self-spinning microgears and…
We review recent work on active colloids or swimmers, such as self-propelled microorganisms, phoretic colloidal particles, and artificial micro-robotic systems, moving in fluid-like environments. These environments can be water-like and…
Microswimmers are active particles of microscopic size that self-propel by setting the surrounding fluid into motion. According to the kind of far-field fluid flow that they induce, they are classified into pushers and pullers. Many studies…