Related papers: Dynamic assembly of active colloids: theory and si…
Cell crawling crucially depends on the collective dynamics of the acto-myosin cytoskeleton. However, it remains an open question to what extent cell polarization and persistent motion depend on continuous regulatory mechanisms and…
The recent finding of collective actuation in active solids, namely solids embedded with active units, opens the path towards multifunctional materials with genuine autonomy. In such systems, collective dynamics emerge spontaneously and…
The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
Anisotropic magnetic colloids with permanent dipole moments exhibit rich field-responsive behavior arising from the interplay between particle geometry, dipolar interactions, and external driving. Modeling these systems remains challenging…
The design of complex materials and the formation of specific patterns often arise from the properties of the individual building blocks. In this respect, colloidal systems offer a unique opportunity because nowadays they can be synthesized…
Switching on high activity in a relatively dense system of active Janus colloids, we observe fast clustering, followed by cluster aggregation towards full phase separation. The phase separation process is however interrupted when large…
Non-equilibrium assembly, driven by fluxes controllable by continuous external energy inputs, enables dynamic and reconfigurable structures. Such controlled 3D assembly is desired for the design of adaptive materials that exploit…
Inspired by recent experiments of cells accumulating on anisotropic substrates, we study a two-dimensional, compressible, isotropic, active fluid in the presence of anisotropic friction. We find that regions of anisotropic friction that are…
The crystallization of hard spheres at equilibrium is perhaps the most familiar example of an entropically-driven phase transition. In recent years, it has become clear that activity can dramatically alter this order-disorder transition in…
Active matter has been intensely studied for its wealth of intriguing properties such as collective motion, motility-induced phase separation (MIPS), and giant fluctuations away from criticality. However, the precise connection of active…
Self-propelled particles include both self-phoretic synthetic colloids and various micro-organisms. By continually consuming energy, they bypass the laws of equilibrium thermodynamics. These laws enforce the Boltzmann distribution in…
The Dynamic Density Functional (DDF) theory and standard Brownian dynamics simulations (BDS) are used to study the drifting effects of a colloidal particle in a polymer solution, both for ideal and interacting polymers. The structure of the…
A collection of rings made of active Brownian particles (ABPs) for different packing fractions and activities is investigated using computer simulations. We show that active rings display an emergent dynamic clustering instead of the…
Active solids combine internal active driving with elasticity to realize states with nonequilibrium mechanics and autonomous motion. They are often studied in overdamped settings, e.g., in soft materials, and the role of inertia is less…
We study by simulation the physics of two colloidal particles in a cholesteric liquid crystal with tangential order parameter alignment at the particle surface. The effective force between the pair is attractive at short range and favors…
We report computer simulation results on the cluster formation of dipolar colloidal particles driven by a rotating external field in a quasi-two-dimensional setup. We focus on the interplay between permanent dipolar and hydrodynamic…
Complex nonequilibrium self-assembly enables the formation of materials with specific patterns and functions from the bottom up. How to directionally control the assembly to form the target configuration is a challenge. Here, we propose a…
Colloidal gels are out-of-equilibrium structures, made up of a rarefied network of colloidal particles. Comparing experiments to numerical simulations, with hydrodynamic interactions switched off, we demonstrate the crucial role of the…
Dynamic processes in dispersions of charged spherical particles are of importance both in fundamental science, and in technical and bio-medical applications. There exists a large variety of charged-particles systems, ranging from…
We study the spatio-temporal dynamics of a model of polar active fluid in two dimensions. The system exhibits a transition from an isotropic to a polarized state as a function of density. The uniform polarized state is, however, unstable…