Related papers: Surface microswimmers, harnessing the interface to…
Active emulsions can spontaneously form self-propelled droplets or phoretic micropumps. It has been predicted that the interaction with their self-generated chemical fields can lead to multistable higher-order flows and chemodynamic…
We use particle simulations to reveal two distinct propulsion mechanisms for a scallop-like swimmer to locomote itself in granular media by reciprocally flapping its wings. Based on the discrete element method, we examine the kinematics 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…
We investigate the individual and collective dynamics of torque-driven particles, called microrollers, near fluid-fluid interfaces. We find that the viscosity ratio across the interface controls the speed and direction of the particles,…
Many microswimmers are able to swim through viscous fluids by employing periodic non-reciprocal deformations of their appendages. Here we use a simple microswimmer model inspired by swimming biflagellates which consists of a spherical cell…
Swimming at a micrometer scale demands particular strategies. Indeed when inertia is negligible as compared to viscous forces (i.e. Reynolds number $Re$ is lower than unity), hydrodynamics equations are reversible in time. To achieve…
A full characterization of the water flow past a silicon superhydrophobic surface with longitudinal micro-grooves enclosed in a microfluidic device is presented. Fluorescence microscopy images of the flow seeded with fluorescent passive…
Cooperative motion in biological microswimmers is crucial for their survival as it facilitates adhesion to surfaces, formation of hierarchical colonies, efficient motion, and enhanced access to nutrients. Synthetic microswimmers currently…
The hydrodynamic interactions between a sedimenting microswimmer and a solid wall have ubiquitous biological and technological applications. A plethora of gravity-induced swimming dynamics near a planar no-slip wall provides a platform for…
Microswimmers are encountered in a wide variety of biophysical settings. When interacting with flow fields, they show interesting dynamical features such as trapping, clustering, and preferential orientation. One important step towards the…
Simple, linear equations relate microscopic swimmers to the corresponding gliders and pumps. They have the following set of consequences: The swimming velocity of free swimmers can be inferred from the force on the tethered swimmer and vice…
A flowing pair of particles in inertial microfluidics gives important insights into understanding and controlling the collective dynamics of particles like cells or droplets in microfluidic devices. They are applied in medical cell analysis…
In the absence of inertia, a reciprocal swimmer achieves no net motion in a viscous Newtonian fluid. Here, we investigate the ability of a reciprocally actuated particle to translate through a complex fluid that possesses a network using…
Microswimmers can acquire information on the surrounding fluid by sensing mechanical queues. They can then navigate in response to these signals. We analyse this navigation by combining deep reinforcement learning with direct numerical…
A popular method to induce synthetic propulsion at the microscale is to use the forces created by surface-produced gas bubbles inside the asymmetric body of a catalytic swimmer (referred to in the literature as microrocket). Gas bubbles…
The navigation of micro-robots in complex flow environments is controlled by rheotaxis, the reorientation with respect to flow gradients. Here we demonstrate how payloads can be exploited to enhance the motion against flows. Using fully…
The movement of microorganisms near solid-liquid interfaces is a topic of significant scientific interest due to its relevance in various natural and industrial contexts, such as biofilm formation and marine biofouling. In this study, we…
We discuss the locomotion of a thermally driven elastic two-sphere microswimmer with internal feedback control that is realized by the position-dependent friction coefficients. In our model, the two spheres are in equilibrium with…
Suspensions of unicellular microswimmers such as flagellated bacteria or motile algae exhibit spontaneous density heterogeneities at large enough concentrations. Based on the relative location of the biological actuation appendages i.e.…
Wedge-shaped geometries in low-Reynolds-number flows are of increasing importance, for instance, in the design of microfluidic devices. The corresponding Green's functions describing the induced flow in response to a locally applied force…