Related papers: Magnetically actuated artificial microswimmers as …

The manipulation and control of microparticles through non-intrusive methods is pivotal in biomedical applications such as cell sorting and cell focusing. Although several experimental and numerical studies have been dedicated to single…

Microorganisms living in microfluidic environments often form multi-species swarms, where they can leverage collective motions to achieve enhanced transport and spreading. Nevertheless, there is a general lack of physical understandings of…

Biological and artificial microswimmers often have to propel through a variety of environments, ranging from heterogeneous suspending media to strong geometrical confinement. Under confinement, local flow fields generated by microswimmers,…

Hypothesis: A broad range of phenomena, such as emulsification and emulsion stability, foam formation or liquid evaporation, are closely related to the dynamics of adsorbing colloidal particles. Elucidation of the mechanisms implied is key…

We consider the stochastic dynamics of an array of two closely spaced atomic force microscope cantilevers in a viscous fluid for use as a possible biomolecule sensor. The cantilevers are not driven externally, as is common in applications…

The properties of biological microswimmers are to a large extent determined by fluid-mediated interactions, which govern their propulsion, perception of their surrounding, and the steering of their motion for feeding or in pursuit.…

We introduce a new low-power 13-mg microactuator driven by shape-memory alloy (SMA) wires for underwater operation. The development of this device was motivated by the recent creation of microswimmers such as the FRISHBot, WaterStrider,…

In isotropic fluids like water, micrometer-scale swimmers have evolved swim strokes to translate despite their tiny size. As described by Purcell in his Scallop Theorem, reciprocal motions, like those performed by a scallop, cannot drive…

We theoretically and computationally study the low-Reynolds-number hydrodynamics of a linear active microswimmer surfing on a compressible thin fluid layer characterized by an odd viscosity. Since the underlying three-dimensional fluid is…

Natural cilia are hair-like microtubule-based structures that are able to move fluid at low Reynolds number through asymmetric motion. In this paper we follow a biomimetic approach to design artificial cilia lining the inner surface of…

This paper presents an overview and discussion of magnetocapillary self-assemblies. New results are presented, in particular concerning the possible development of future applications. These self-organizing structures possess the notable…

Swimming cells often have to self-propel through fluids displaying non-Newtonian rheology. While past theoretical work seems to indicate that stresses arising from complex fluids should systematically hinder low-Reynolds number locomotion,…

Biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery, microsurgery, and sensing rely on reaching precise areas within the body in a minimally invasive way. Artificial bacterial flagella (ABFs) have emerged as potential tools for this task…

Few simulations exist for microswimmers near deformable interfaces. Here, we present numerical simulations of the hydrodynamic flows associated with a single microswimmer embedded in a binary fluid mixture. The two fluids demix, separated…

In this study, we use numerical simulations to investigate the flow field induced by a single magnetic microrobot rotating with a constant angular speed about an axis perpendicular to an underlying surface. A parallel solver for steady…

In the present paper the behavior of a single artificial microswimmer is addressed, namely an active droplet moving by Marangoni flow. The non-uniform surface tension distribution underlying the propulsion mechanism of the droplet, is…

Locomotion is typically studied either in continuous media where bodies and legs experience forces generated by the flowing medium, or on solid substrates dominated by friction. In the former, centralized coordination is believed to…

The transport of motile entities across modulated energy landscapes plays an important role in a range of phenomena in biology, colloidal science and solid-state physics. Here, an easily implementable strategy that allows for the collective…

Several recent experiments investigate the orientational and transport behavior of self-driven bacteria and colloidal particles in nematic liquid crystals. Correspondingly, we study theoretically the dynamics of a minimal model microswimmer…

Catalytic microswimmers convert the chemical energy of a fuel into motion, sustaining spatial chemical gradients and fluid flows that drive their propulsion. This leads to unconventional individual behavior and the emergence of collective…