Related papers: Metallic Microswimmers Driven up the Wall by Gravi…
Many motile microorganisms adjust their swimming motion relative to the gravitational field and thus counteract sedimentation to the ground. This gravitactic behavior is often the result of an inhomogeneous mass distribution which aligns…
The swimming direction of biological or artificial microscale swimmers tends to be randomised over long time-scales by thermal fluctuations. Bacteria use various strategies to bias swimming behaviour and achieve directed motion against a…
An artificial microswimmer drifts in response to spatio-temporal modulations of an activating suspension medium. We consider two competing mechanisms capable of influencing its tactic response: angular fluctuations, which help it explore…
A key goal in developing molecular microrobots that mimic real-world animal dynamic behavior is to understand better the self-continuous progressive motion resulting from collective molecular transformation. This study reports, for the…
Biological systems often involve the self-assembly of basic components into complex and function- ing structures. Artificial systems that mimic such processes can provide a well-controlled setting to explore the principles involved and also…
Microswimmers typically move near walls, which can strongly influence their motion. However, direct experimental measurements of swimmer-wall separation remain elusive to date. Here, we determine this separation for model catalytic…
Catalytic microswimmers typically swim close to walls due to hydrodynamic and/or phoretic effects. The walls in turn are known to affect their propulsion, making it difficult to single out the contributions that stem from particle-based…
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…
When tiny soft ferromagnetic particles are placed along a liquid interface and exposed to a vertical magnetic field, the balance between capillary attraction and magnetic repulsion leads to self-organization into well-defined patterns.…
Through billions of years of evolution, microorganisms mastered unique swimming behaviors to thrive in complex fluid environments. Limitations in nanofabrication have thus far hindered the ability to design and program synthetic swimmers…
Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) are endowed with an exquisite orientation mechanism allowing them to swim along the geomagnetic field lines. This mechanism consists of a chain of bio-synthesized magnetic nano-crystals that endow MTB with a…
Various microorganisms and some mammalian cells are able to swim in viscous fluids by performing nonreciprocal body deformations, such as rotating attached flagella or by distorting their entire body. In order to perform chemotaxis, i.e. to…
Gravitational effects in colloidal suspensions can be easily turned off by matching the density of the solid microparticles with the one of the surrounding fluid. By studying the motion of catalytic microswimmers with tunable buoyant…
Living microorganisms are capable of a tactic response to external stimuli by swimming towards or away from the stimulus source; they do so by adapting their tactic signal transduction pathways to the environment. Their self-motility thus…
Physics governing the locomotion of microorganisms and other microsystems is dominated by viscous damping. An effective swimming strategy involves the non-reciprocal and periodic deformations of the considered body. Here, we show that a…
In this manuscript we describe the realization of a minimal hybrid microswimmer, composed of a ferromagnetic nanorod and a paramagnetic microsphere. The unbounded pair is propelled in water upon application of a swinging magnetic field that…
Swimming micro-organisms such as flagellated bacteria and sperm cells have fascinating locomotion capabilities. Inspired by their natural motion, there is an ongoing effort to develop artificial robotic nano-swimmers for potential in-body…
Magnetotaxis is a well known phenomenon in swimming microorganisms which sense magnetic fields e.g. by incorporating crystalline magnetosomes. In designing artificial active matter with tunable dynamics, external magnetic fields can provide…
Locomotion and transport of microorganisms in fluids is an essential aspect of life. Search for food, orientation toward light, spreading of off-spring, and the formation of colonies are only possible due to locomotion. Swimming at the…
The motion of microorganisms in their natural habitat is strongly influenced by their propulsion mechanisms, geometrical constraints, and random fluctuations. Here, we study numerically the first-passage-time (FPT) statistics of…