Related papers: Reaching for the surface: Spheroidal microswimmers…
Three-dimensional simulations with fully resolved hydrodynamics are performed to study the dynamics of a single squirmer under gravity, in order to clarify its motion in the vicinity of a flat plate. Different dynamics emerge for different…
Unlike macroscopic swimmers, microswimmers operate in a low-Reynolds-number regime dominated by viscous forces. This paper investigates the controllability of a magnetic microswimmer composed of a spherical magnetic head and an elastic,…
Most aquatic vertebrates swim by lateral flapping of their bodies and caudal fins. While much effort has been devoted to understanding the flapping kinematics and its influence on the swimming efficiency, little is known about the stability…
Microscopic robots could perform tasks with high spatial precision, such as acting in biological tissues on the scale of individual cells, provided they can reach precise locations. This paper evaluates the feasibility of in vivo locomotion…
We study the effect of a nearby planar wall on the propulsion of a spherical phoretic micro-swimmer driven by reactions on its surface. An asymmetric coverage of catalysts on its surface which absorb reactants and generate products gives…
Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…
The swimming of a spheroid immersed in a viscous fluid and performing surface deformations periodically in time is studied on the basis of Stokes equations of low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. The average over a period of time of the…
The emerging field of self-driven active particles in fluid environments has recently created significant interest in the biophysics and bioengineering communities owing to their promising future biomedical and technological applications.…
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…
It is known that obstacles can hydrodynamically trap bacteria and synthetic microswimmers in orbits, where the trapping time heavily depends on the swimmer flow field and noise is needed to escape the trap. Here, we use experiments and…
Microswimmers are microscopic active agents capable of harvesting energy from the surrounding environment and converting it into self-propulsion and directed motion. This peculiar feature characterizes them as out-of-equilibrium systems…
In the framework of the canonical model of hydrodynamics, where fluid is assumed to be ideal and incompressible, waves are potential, two-dimensional, and symmetric, the authors have recently reported the existence of a new type of gravity…
Many small organisms self-propel in viscous fluids using travelling wave-like deformation of their bodies or appendages. Examples include small nematodes moving through soil using whole-body undulations or spermatozoa swimming through mucus…
The interaction of an object with an unsteady flow is non-trivial and is still far from being fully understood. When an airfoil or hydrofoil, for example, undergoes time-dependent motion, nonlinear flow phenomena such as dynamic stall can…
The paper presents a two-phase hydrodynamic model for the numerical simulation of collective motion in a thin layer of active colloids containing spherical microswimmers. The model accounts for three fundamental mechanisms governing the…
Flagellar-driven locomotion plays a critical role in bacterial attachment and colonization of surfaces, contributing to the risks of contamination and infection. Tremendous attempts to uncover the underlying principles governing bacterial…
We study synchronization in bulk suspensions of spherical microswimmers with chiral trajectories using large scale numerics. The model is generic. It corresponds to the lowest order solution of a general model for self-propulsion at low…
The motion of microswimmers in complex flows is ruled by the interplay between swimmer propulsion and the dynamics induced by the fluid velocity field. Here we study the motion of a chiral microswimmer whose propulsion is provided by the…
Microorganisms and synthetic microswimmers often encounter complex environments consisting of networks of obstacles embedded into viscous fluids. Such settings include biological media, such as mucus with filamentous networks, as well as…
Small organisms (e.g., bacteria) and artificial microswimmers move due to a combination of active swimming and passive Brownian motion. Considering a simplified linear three-sphere swimmer, we study how the swimmer size regulates the…