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Superresolution microscopy has become a powerful tool to investigate the internal structure of complex colloidal and polymeric systems, such as microgels, at the nanometer scale. The ability to monitor microgels response to temperature…

The drag anisotropy of slender filaments is a critical physical property allowing swimming in low-Reynolds number flows, and without it linear translation is impossible. Here we show that, in contrast, net rotation can occur under isotropic…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2016-05-04 Lyndon Koens , Eric Lauga

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…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2013-10-21 Marcelo A. Dias , Thomas R. Powers

Predicting how a deformable body moves and deforms in a viscous flow underlies problems ranging from microorganism locomotion to soft microrobotics, yet existing frameworks are either problem-specific or ill-suited to inverse design. We…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2026-05-25 Christophe Eloy

Minimally invasive medical procedures, such as endovascular catheterization, have drastically reduced procedure time and associated complications. However, many regions inside the body, such as in the brain vasculature, still remain…

Applied Physics · Physics 2021-01-27 Lucio Pancaldi , Pietro Dirix , Adele Fanelli , Diego Ghezzi , Mahmut Selman Sakar

Micron-size self-propelling particles are often proposed as synthetic models for biological microswimmers, yet they lack internally regulated adaptation, which is central to the autonomy of their biological counterparts. Conversely,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2021-09-01 L. Alvarez , M. A. Fernandez-Rodriguez , A. Alegria , S. Arrese-Igor , K. Zhao , M. Kröger , Lucio Isa

The band structures of single-layer MoS$_2$ and WS$_2$ present a coupling between spin and valley degrees of freedom that suppresses spin-flip scattering and spin dephasing. Here we show that out-of-plane deformations, such as corrugations…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2017-04-12 Shoeib Babaee Touski , Rafael Roldán , Mahdi Pourfath , M. Pilar López-Sancho

Breakthroughs in nanotechnology have enabled the large-scale fabrication of nanoparticles with varied compositions and structures. Yet, evaluating their electrical conductivities remains challenging due to high volume and individual…

Applied Physics · Physics 2025-10-22 Yun Huang , Kai Xu , Zexi Liang , Huaizhi Li , Wenjuan Zhu , Donglei Emma Fan

Worm-like filaments that are propelled homogeneously along their tangent vector are studied by Brownian dynamics simulations. Systems in two dimensions are investigated, corresponding to filaments adsorbed to interfaces or surfaces. A large…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2016-08-23 Rolf E. Isele-Holder , Jens Elgeti , Gerhard Gompper

We introduce a system of light driven microscopic autonomous moving particles that move on a flat surface. The design is simple, yet effective: Micrometer sized objects with wedge shape are produced by photopolymerization, they are covered…

Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…

Robotics · Computer Science 2015-09-28 Vishesh Vikas , Paul Templeton , Barry Trimmer

We experimentally demonstrate that the rotation of molecules embedded in helium nanodroplets can be controlled with an optical centrifuge, allowing for the study of molecular dynamics inside the strongly interacting many-body environment of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-11-11 Ian MacPhail-Bartley , Alexander A. Milner , Frank Stienkemeier , Valery Milner

In this paper, we speculate on a possible application of Liquid Crystal Elastomers to the field of soft robotics. In particular, we study a concept for limbless locomotion that is amenable to miniaturisation. For this purpose, we formulate…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2016-02-09 Antonio DeSimone , Paolo Gidoni , Giovanni Noselli

Using recently proposed improvements of Reflection Electron Microsopy (REM) we study in perfectly controlled thermodynamics conditions spiral shapes and spirals on Si(111) surface. It is shown that the new method named low distortion…

Materials Science · Physics 2007-06-18 B. Ranguelov , J. J. Metois , P. Muller

Locomotion and transport of microorganisms in fluids is an essential aspect of life. Search for food, orientation toward light, spreading of off-spring, and the formation of colonies are only possible due to locomotion. Swimming at the…

Biological Physics · Physics 2015-05-26 Jens Elgeti , Roland G. Winkler , Gerhard Gompper

Controllable rotation of micro-/nano-objects provides tremendous opportunities for cellular biology, three-dimensional (3D) imaging, and micro/nanorobotics. Among different rotation techniques, optical rotation is particularly attractive…

Optics · Physics 2023-01-18 Hongru Ding , Zhihan Chen , Carolina Ponce , Yuebing Zheng

The use of microscopic discrete fluid volumes (i.e., droplets) as microreactors for digital microfluidic applications often requires mixing enhancement and control within droplets. In this work, we consider a translating spherical liquid…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2008-09-23 R. Chabreyrie , D. Vainchtein , C. Chandre , P. Singh , N. Aubry

We propose a very simple one-dimensional swimmer consisting of three spheres that are linked by rigid rods whose lengths can change between two values. With a periodic motion in a non-reciprocal fashion, which breaks the time-reversal…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2009-11-10 Ali Najafi , Ramin Golestanian

We investigate numerically light propagation in a single spiral waveguide formed in a nonlinear photorefractive medium for a low spatial frequency of the waveguide rotation. We present the general procedure for finding solitonic solutions…

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…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2020-10-02 José-Agustín Arguedas-Leiva , Michael Wilczek