Related papers: Swimming to Stability: Structural and Dynamical Co…
Active semiflexible filaments are crucial in various biophysical processes, yet insights into their single-filament behavior have predominantly relied on theory and simulations, owing to the scarcity of controllable synthetic systems. Here,…
Understanding the out-of-equilibrium properties of noisy microscale systems and the extent to which they can be modulated externally, is a crucial scientific and technological challenge. It holds the promise to unlock disruptive new…
The random energy landscapes developed by speckle fields can be used to confine and manipulate a large number of micro-particles with a single laser beam. By means of molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate the static and dynamic…
We have developed a simulation model to study the hydrodynamic flow fields around Brownian colloidal particles with an active surface patch. Hydrodynamics is introduced by modeling low-Reynolds-number fluid flows around a colloid using…
We study a microscopically realistic model of a physical gel and use computer simulations to investigate its static and dynamic properties at thermal equilibrium. The phase diagram comprises a sol phase, a coexistence region ending at a…
Active colloidal particles typically exhibit a pronounced affinity for accumulating and being captured at boundaries. Here, we engineer long-range repulsive interactions between colloids that self-propel under an electric field and…
Physical properties of colloidal materials can be modified by addition of nanoparticles. Within a model of like-charged mixtures of particles governed by effective electrostatic interactions, we explore the influence of charged…
Thanks to a constant energy input, active matter can self-assemble into phases with complex architectures and functionalities such as living clusters that dynamically form, reshape and break-up, which are forbidden in equilibrium materials…
Active gels play an important role in biology and in inspiring biomimetic active materials, due to their ability to change shape, size and create their own morphology; the relevant mechanics behind these changes is driven by…
Colloidal particles moving in a fluid interact via the induced velocity field. The collective dynamic state for a class of actively forced colloids, driven by harmonic potentials via a rule that couples forces to configurations, to perform…
The internal dynamics of active gels, both in artificial (in-vitro) model systems and inside the cytoskeleton of living cells, has been extensively studied by experiments of recent years. These dynamics are probed using tracer particles…
Physical learning is an emerging paradigm in science and engineering whereby (meta)materials acquire desired macroscopic behaviors by exposure to examples. So far, it has been applied to static properties such as elastic moduli and…
The dynamical properties of classical fluids at pico-liter scale attract experimentally and theoretically much attention in the soft-matter and biophysics communities, due to the appearance of the microfluidics, also called 'lab-on-a-chip',…
We study the interaction of small hydrophobic particles on the surface of an ultra-soft elastic gel, in which a small amount of elasticity of the medium balances the weights of the particles. The excess energy of the surface of the deformed…
Active nematics, formed from a liquid crystalline suspension of active force dipoles, are a paradigmatic active matter system whose study provides insights into how chemical driving produces the cellular mechanical forces essential for…
Active systems comprising micron-sized self-propelling units, also termed microswimmers, are promising candidates for the bottom-up assembly of small structures and reconfigurable materials. Here we leverage field-driven colloidal assembly…
Non-active disordered solids feature quasilocalized excitations that control plasticity, similar to crystal lattice defects, and these excitations can be identified via harmonic or anharmonic analyses of the potential energy landscape. Here…
Attractive colloidal dispersions, suspensions of fine particles which aggregate and frequently form a space spanning elastic gel are ubiquitous materials in society with a wide range of applications. The colloidal networks in these…
Dynamical clustering represents a characteristic feature of active matter consisting of self-propelled agents that convert energy from the environment into mechanical motion. At the micron scale, typical of overdamped dynamics, particles…
Living organisms have mastered the dynamic control of internal stresses to perform an array of functions, such as change shape and locomote. State-of-the-art attempts to replicate this ability in synthetic materials are rudimentary in…