Related papers: An active approach to colloidal self-assembly
We investigate the structure formation of amphiphilic molecules at planar walls using density functional theory. The molecules are modeled as (hard) spheres composed of a hydrophilic and hydrophobic part. The orientation of the resulting…
Self-powered motion in catalytic colloidal particles provides a compelling example of active matter, i.e. systems that engage in single-particle and collective behavior far from equilibrium. The long-time, long-distance behavior of such…
Swimmers and self-propelled particles are physical models for the collective behaviour and motility of a wide variety of living systems, such as bacteria colonies, bird flocks and fish schools. Such artificial active materials are amenable…
The assembly of colloids in nematic liquid crystals via topological defects has been extensively studied for spherical particles, and investigations of other colloid shapes have revealed a wide array of new assembly behaviors. We show,…
Endowing materials with physical intelligence holds the key for a progress leap in robotic systems. In spite of the growing success for macroscopic devices, transferring these concepts to the microscale presents several challenges connected…
Biological systems exhibit large-scale self-organized dynamics and structures which enable organisms to perform the functions of life. The field of active matter strives to develop and understand microscopically-driven nonequilibrium…
A simple model of an active colloid consisting of dumbbell-shaped particles that cyclically change their length without propelling themselves is proposed and analyzed. At nanoscales, it represents an idealization for bacterial cytoplasm or…
Electrostatic interactions play an important role in numerous self-assembly phenomena, including colloidal aggregation. Although colloids typically have a dielectric constant that differs from the surrounding solvent, the effective…
We use computer simulation to investigate the self-assembly of Janus-like amphiphilic peanut-shaped nanoparticles, finding phases of clusters, bilayers and micelles in accord with ideas of packing familiar from the study of molecular…
We study the self-assembly of branching-chain networks and crystals in a binary colloidal system with tunable interactions. The particle positions are extracted from microscope images and order parameters are extracted by image processing…
The structure of a finite particle cluster is typically determined by total energy minimization. Here we consider the case where a cluster of soft sphere dipoles becomes active, i.e. when the individual particles exhibit an additional…
Active colloidal systems with non-equilibrium self-organization is a long-standing, challenging area in biology. To understand how hydrodynamic flow may be used to actively control self-assembly of Janus particles (JPs), we use a model…
We demonstrate that the active thermocapillary stresses induced by multiple microbubbles offer simple routes to directed self-assembly and complex but controllable micromanipulation of mesoscopic colloidal particles embedded in a liquid.…
Optothermal interaction of active colloidal matter can facilitate environmental cues which can influence the dynamics of active soft matter systems. The optically induced thermal effect can be harnessed to study non-equilibrium…
Active fluids generate spontaneous, often chaotic mesoscale flows. Harnessing these flows to drive embedded soft materials into structures with controlled length scales and lifetimes is a key challenge at the interface between the fields of…
An important challenge in active matter lies in harnessing useful global work from entities that produce work locally, e.g., via self-propulsion. We investigate here the active matter version of a classical capillary rise effect, by…
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…
Field induced assembly of reconfigurable structures with complex hierarchical configurations has recently become an area of intense research with the promise for exciting applications in programmable self-assembly and nano/microstructure…
We systematically investigate the self-assembly of anisotropic cone-shaped particles decorated by ring-like attractive patches. We demonstrate that the self-assembled clusters, which arise due to the conical particle's anisotropic shape…
The rapid progress in precisely designing the surface decoration of patchy colloidal particles offers a new, yet unexperienced freedom to create building entities for larger, more complex structures in soft matter systems. However, it is…