Related papers: Autonomous navigation of shape-shifting microswimm…
The motion of an artificial micro-scale swimmer that uses a chemical reaction catalyzed on its own surface to achieve autonomous propulsion is fully characterized experimentally. It is shown that at short times, it has a substantial…
Microorganisms are able to overcome the thermal randomness of their surroundings by harvesting energy to navigate in viscous fluid environments. In a similar manner, synthetic colloidal microswimmers are capable of mimicking complex…
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,…
Living microorganisms are capable of a tactic response to external stimuli by swimming towards or away from the stimulus source; they do so by adapting their tactic signal transduction pathways to the environment. Their self-motility thus…
We discuss recent progress in the theoretical description of chemotaxis by coupling the diffusion equation of a chemical species to equations describing the motion of sensing microorganisms. In particular, we discuss models for…
Microscopic self-propelled swimmers capable of autonomous navigation through complex environments provide appealing opportunities for localization, pick-up and delivery of micro-and nanoscopic objects. Inspired by motile cells and bacteria,…
An artificial microswimmer drifts in response to spatio-temporal modulations of an activating suspension medium. We consider two competing mechanisms capable of influencing its tactic response: angular fluctuations, which help it explore…
Motivated by the observation of non-exponential run-time distributions of bacterial swimmers, we propose a minimal phenomenological model for taxis of active particles whose motion is controlled by an internal clock. The ticking of the…
Chemotaxis is the response of a particle to a gradient in the chemical composition of the environment. While it was originally observed for biological organisms, it is of great interest in the context of synthetic active particles such as…
In this review we discuss recent advances in the self-assembly of self-propelled colloidal particles and highlight some of the most exciting results in this field with a specific focus on dry active matter. We explore this phenomenology…
Various microorganisms and some mammalian cells are able to swim in viscous fluids by performing nonreciprocal body deformations, such as rotating attached flagella or by distorting their entire body. In order to perform chemotaxis, i.e. to…
The dynamics of self-propelled colloidal particles are strongly influenced by their environment through hydrodynamic and, in many cases, chemical interactions. We develop a theoretical framework to describe the motion of confined active…
Self-diffusiophoretic particles exploit local concentration gradients of a solute species in order to self-propel at the micron scale. While an isolated chemically- and geometrically-isotropic particle cannot swim, we show that it can…
Applications of active particles require a method for controlling their dynamics. While this is typically achieved via direct interventions, indirect interventions based, e.g., on an orientation-dependent self-propulsion speed of the…
Achieving control over the directionality of active colloids is essential for their use in practical applications such as cargo carriers in microfluidic devices. So far, guidance of spherical Janus colloids was mainly realized using…
Conspectus: The ability to navigate in chemical gradients, called chemotaxis, is crucial for the survival of microorganisms. It allows them to find food and to escape from toxins. Many microorganisms can produce the chemicals to which they…
Chemically powered self-propelled colloids generate a motor force by converting locally a source of energy into directed motion, a process that has been explored both in experiments and in computational models. The use of active colloids as…
Active colloids, also known as artificial microswimmers, are self-propelled micro and nanoparticles that convert uniform sources of fuel (e.g. chemical) or uniform external driving fields (e.g. magnetic or electric) into directed motion by…
A common feature of biological self-organization is how active agents communicate with each other or their environment via chemical signaling. Such communications, mediated by self-generated chemical gradients, have consequences for both…
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…