Related papers: Diffusiophoretic design of self-spinning microgear…
Slow long-lived fluctuations of mechanical properties of drying drops of instant coffee water solutions have been found by means of the Drying Drop Technology developed earlier. Parameters of the fluctuations depended on the extent of…
Phototaxis is a light driven self-locomotion of mass and a common phenomenon in motile organisms with varieties of motility such as in bacteria, algae, etc. In naturally occurring organisms, mechanical force is generated utilising their…
The propulsion of active particles by self-diffusiophoresis is driven by asymmetric catalytic reactions on the particle surface that generate a mechanochemical coupling between the fluid velocity and the concentration fields of fuel and…
Finding cost-effective and efficient photocatalytic materials able to catalyse the water splitting reaction under visible light is one of the greatest challenges in current environmental material science. Despite that many photocatalysts…
Manipulating the way in which colloidal particles self-organise is a central challenge in the design of functional soft materials. Meeting this challenge requires the use of building blocks that interact with one another in a highly…
Hot microswimmers are self-propelled Brownian particles that exploit local heating for their directed self-thermophoretic motion. We provide a pedagogical overview of the key physical mechanisms underlying this promising new technology. It…
Hydrodynamic interactions (HIs) are important in biophysics research because they influence both the collective and the individual behaviour of microorganisms and self-propelled particles. For instance, HIs at the micro-swimmer level…
We present a simple one-pot co-assembly method for the synthesis of hierarchically structured pigment particles consisting of silica inverse-opal bricks that are doped with plasmonic absorbers. We study the interplay between the plasmonic…
When swimming at low Reynolds numbers, inertial effects are negligible and reciprocal movements cannot induce net motion. Instead, symmetry breaking is necessary to achieve net propulsion. Directed swimming can be supported by magnetic…
We study both experimentally and theoretically the self-assembly of binary block copolymers in dilute solution, where self-assembly is triggered by changing the solvent from the common good solvent THF to the selective solvent water, and…
We report an experimental study on the manipulation of colloidal particles in a drop sitting on a hydrogel. The manipulation is achieved by diffusiophoresis, which describes a directed motion of particles induced by solute gradients. By…
Understanding how colloids move in crowded environments is key for gaining control over their transport in applications such as drug delivery, filtration, contaminant/microplastic remediation and agriculture. The classical models of colloid…
Active matter exhibits various forms of non-equilibrium states in the absence of external forcing, including macroscopic steady-state currents. Such states are often too complex to be modelled from first principles and our understanding of…
Hydrogel diffusiophoresis is the deformation of a hydrogel due to a solute gradient that leads to a gradient of pairwise interactions between the solute particles and the hydrogel polymers to trigger osmotic flux. Unlike typical osmosis, it…
Current theories of diffusiophoresis in porous media are limited to a porous medium saturated with a valence symmetric electrolyte. A predictive model for diffusiophoresis in porous media saturated with a valence asymmetric electrolyte, or…
Microscopic analysis of micro particles in situ in diverse water environments is necessary for monitoring water quality and localizing contamination sources. Conventional sensors such as optical microscopes and fluorometers often require…
Understanding multibody interactions between colloidal particles out of equilibrium has a profound impact on dynamical processes such as colloidal self assembly. However, traditional colloidal interactions are effectively quasi-static on…
We present a structure-preserving discretization of the hybrid magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)-driftkinetic system for simulations of low-frequency wave-particle interactions. The model equations are derived from a variational principle,…
Synthetic microswimmers mimicking biological movements at the microscale have been developed in recent years. Actuating helical magnetic materials with a homogeneous rotating magnetic field is one of the most widespread techniques for…
In situ polymerization and micropatterning of hydrogels on-chip opens the potential for many applications such as tracking and controlling the diffusion of molecules, stimulants, inhibitors, as well as nutrients and drugs, from their source…