Related papers: Activity-controlled Annealing of Colloidal Monolay…
Cytoskeletal networks are foundational examples of active matter and central to self-organized structures in the cell. In vivo, these networks are active and heavily crosslinked. Relating their large-scale dynamics to properties of their…
Colloidal gels are prime examples of functional materials exhibiting disordered, amorphous, yet meta-stable forms. They maintain stability through short-range attractive forces and their material properties are tunable by external forces.…
Based on Brownian Dynamics (BD) simulations, we study the dynamical self-assembly of active Brownian particles with dipole-dipole interactions, stemming from a permanent point dipole at the particle center. The propulsion direction of each…
Transitions between solid-like and fluid-like states in living tissues have been found in steps of embryonic development and in stages of disease progression. Our current understanding of these transitions has been guided by experimental…
Recent experiments have led to active colloidal molecules which aggregate from non-motile building blocks and acquire self-propulsion through their non-reciprocal interactions. Here, we model the collective behavior of such active molecules…
Using Brownian dynamics simulations, we investigate the dynamics of colloids confined in two-dimensional narrow channels driven by a non-uniform force F(y). We considered linear-gradient, parabolic and delta-like driving-force profiles.…
Using a simple model, we study the fluctuating dynamics of inextensible, semiflexible polar filaments interacting with active and directed force generating centres such as molecular motors. Taking into account the fact that the activity…
Over the past decade, autophoretic colloids have emerged as a prototypical system for studying self-propelled motion at microscopic scales, with promising applications in microfluidics, micromachinery, and therapeutics. Their motion in a…
Incorporating cells within active biomaterial scaffolds is a promising strategy to develop forefront materials that can autonomously sense, respond, and alter the scaffold in response to environmental cues or internal cell circuitry. Using…
Designing microscopic and nanoscopic self-propelled particles and characterising their motion has become a major scientific challenge over the past decades. To this purpose, phoretic effects, namely propulsion mechanisms relying on local…
The growth of actin filament networks is a fundamental biological process that drives a variety of cellular and intracellular motions. During motility, eukaryotic cells and intracellular pathogens are propelled by actin networks organized…
Active matter physics has been developed with various types of self-propelled particles, including those with polar and bipolar motility and beyond. However, the bipolar motions experimentally realized so far have been either random along…
With an eye towards next-generation, smart, micro/nanofluidic devices, capable of responding to external stimuli or changes in environment, we demonstrate a means to achieve dynamic control of the spatio-temporal properties of the electric…
We propose a mechanism to control the formation of stable obstructions in two-dimensional micro-channels of variable sections taking advantage of the peculiar clustering property of active systems. Under the activation of the…
Active materials with distinctive nonequilibrium properties have diverse materials science applications. Active systems are common in living matter, such as the filament network in the cell that is activated by molecular motors, and in…
Foam is a canonical example of disordered soft matter where local force balance leads to the competition of many metastable configurations. Here we present an experimental and theoretical framework for "active foam" where an individual…
Colloidal molecules are ideal model systems for mimicking real molecules and can serve as versatile building blocks for the bottom-up self-assembly of flexible and smart materials. While most colloidal molecules are rigid objects, the…
From synthetic active devices such as self-propelling Janus colloids to micro-organisms like bacteria, micro-algae, living cells in tissues, active fluctuations are ubiquitous. Thermodynamics of small systems involving thermal as well as…
We develop efficient numerical methods for performing many-body Brownian dynamics simulations of a recently-observed fingering instability in an active suspension of colloidal rollers sedimented above a wall [M. Driscoll, B. Delmotte, M.…
Active contributions to fluctuations are a direct consequence of metabolic energy consumption in living cells. Such metabolic processes continuously create active forces, which deform the membrane to control motility, proliferation as well…