Related papers: Using Shape Diversity on the way to new Structure-…
We show that activity and broken fore-aft shape symmetry enable microswimmers to cross streamlines in nonuniform shear, a key yet overlooked factor in active cross-stream migration. Using a model of flagellated microswimmers in microchannel…
Ciliated microswimmers and flagellated bacteria alter their swimming trajectories to follow the direction of an applied electric field exhibiting electrotaxis. Both for matters of application and physical modelling, it is instructive to…
Collective control of mobile microrobotic swarms is indispensable for their potential high-impact applications in targeted drug delivery, medical diagnostics, parallel micromanipulation, and environmental sensing and remediation. Lack of…
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.…
We study the microrheology of active suspensions through direct hydrodynamic simulations using model pusher-like microswimmers. We demonstrate that the friction coefficient of a probe particle is notably reduced by hydrodynamic interactions…
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.…
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…
Achieving macroscopic directed migration of microscale swimmers in a fluid is an important step towards utilizing their autonomous motion. It has been experimentally shown that directed motion can be induced, without any external fields, by…
Microscopic artificial swimmers have recently become highly attractive due to their promising potential for biomedical applications. The pioneering work of Dreyfus et al (2005) has demonstrated the motion of a microswimmer with an…
Self-propelled micron-size particles suspended in a fluid, like bacteria or synthetic microswimmers, are strongly non-equilibrium systems where particle motility breaks the microscopic detailed balance, often resulting in large-scale…
Controlling the motion of nano and microscale objects in a fluid environment is a key factor in designing optimized tiny machines that perform mechanical tasks such as transport of drugs or genetic material in cells, fluid mixing to…
We study a simple magnetohydrodynamical approach in which hydrodynamics and MHD turbulence are coupled in a shell model, with given dynamo constrains in the large scales. We consider the case of a low Prandtl number fluid for which the…
This paper presents aims at mobility improvement of flexible underwater robots. For this purpose, a novel propulsion method using planar structural vibration pattern is proposed, and tested on two kinds of prototypes. The result of…
Hydrodynamic interactions are crucial for determining the cooperative behavior of microswimmers at low Reynolds numbers. Here we provide a comprehensive analysis of the scaling and strength of the interactions in the case of a pair of…
Contrary to microbial taxis, where a tactic response to external stimuli is controlled by complex chemical pathways acting like sensor-actuator loops, taxis of artificial microswimmers is a purely stochastic effect associated with a…
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…
Direct near field electrospinning is used to produce very long helical polystyrene microfibers in water. The pitch length of helices can be controlled by changing the applied voltage, allowing to produce both micro springs and…
Microorganisms often encounter strong confinement and complex hydrodynamic flows while navigating their habitats. Combining finite-element methods and stochastic simulations, we study the interplay of active transport and heterogeneous…
Swimming by shape changes at low Reynolds number is widely used in biology and understanding how the efficiency of movement depends on the geometric pattern of shape changes is important to understand swimming of microorganisms and in…
We study the orientational and translational dynamics of spherical microswimmers trapped at fluid interfaces, in terms of the force dipole and source dipole components of their flow field. Using numerical simulations and analytical…