Related papers: Controlled Optofluidic Crystallization of Colloids…
High-precision micromanipulation techniques, including optical tweezers and hydrodynamic trapping, have garnered wide-spread interest. Recent advances in optofluidic multiplexed assembly and microrobotics demonstrate significant progress,…
The formation, deformation, and break-up of liquid interfaces are ubiquitous phenomena in nature. In the present article we discuss the deformation of a liquid interface produced by optical radiation forces. Usually, the bending of such an…
Direct laser slab face-cooling by a fluid crossing the main and pump laser beams is an important method to reach high average laser powers. However, the flow regime is usually maintained at low Reynolds numbers, to prevent the onset of…
Understanding light-matter interaction enables harnessing physical effects to translate into new capabilities realized in modern integrated photonics platforms. Here, we present the design and characterization of optofluidic components in…
Motile liquid crystal (LC) colloids show peculiar behavior due to the high sensitivity to external stimuli driven by the LC elastic and surface effects. However, few studies focus on harnessing the LC phase transitions to propel colloidal…
This fluid dynamics video showcases how optically induced electrokinetic forces can be used to drive three-dimensional micro-vortices. The strong microfluidic vortices are used constructively in conjunction with other electrokinetic forces…
Pure liquids in thermodynamic equilibrium are structurally homogeneous. In liquid crystals, flow and light pulses are used to create reconfigurable domains with polar order. Moreover, through careful engineering of concerted microfluidic…
The influence of a fluid-fluid interface on self-phoresis of chemically active, axially symmetric, spherical colloids is analyzed. Distinct from the studies of self-phoresis for colloids trapped at fluid interfaces or in the vicinity of…
This mini-review discusses the recent contribution of theoretical and computational physics as well as experimental efforts to the understanding of the behavior of colloidal particles in confined geometries and at liquid crystalline…
The non-equilibrium distribution of colloids in a polymer solution under a temperature gradient is studied experimentally. A slight increase of local temperature by a focused laser drives the colloids towards the hot region, resulting in…
We systematically study the relationship between equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase diagrams of a system of short-ranged attractive colloids. Using Monte Carlo and Brownian dynamics simulations we find a window of enhanced…
We study the self-assembly of colloidal microgel particles at a quasi-two-dimensional air-water interface of a drying droplet. Using bright-field microscopy, we demonstrate that increasing particle elasticity drives interfacial organization…
Cholesteric liquid crystals can exhibit spatial patterns in molecular alignment at interfaces that can be exploited for particle assembly. These patterns emerge from the competition between bulk and surface energies, tunable with the system…
Light-induced control of ions within small Coulomb crystals is investigated. By intense intracavity optical standing wave fields, subwavelength localization of individual ions is achieved for one-, two-, and three-dimensional crystals.…
We investigate the equilibrium properties of a colloidal solution in contact with a soft interface. As a result of symmetry breaking, surface effects are generally prevailing in confined colloidal systems. In this Letter, particular…
The active motion of phoretic colloids leads them to accumulate at boundaries and interfaces. Such an excess accumulation, with respect to their passive counterparts, makes the dynamics of phoretic colloids particularly sensitive to the…
Artificial soft matter systems have appeared as important tools to harness mechanical motion for microscale manipulation. Typically, this motion is driven either by the external fields or by mutual interaction between the colloids. In the…
We study the effects of the optical binding force on wavelength sized colloidal particles free to move in a counter-propagating beam. This work is motivated by the concept of using optical binding to direct the assembly of large numbers of…
Optical microscopy and multi-particle tracking are used to investigate the cross-correlated diffusion of quasi two-dimensional (2D) colloidal particles near an oil-water interface. It is shown that the effect of the interface on correlated…
Capillary forces guide the motion of biomolecular condensates, water-borne insects, and breakfast cereal. These surface-mediated interactions can be harnessed to build units into materials with exotic properties deriving from mesoscale…