Related papers: Activity-suppressed phase separation
Living and engineered systems rely on the stable coexistence of two interspersed liquid phases. Yet surface tension drives their complete separation. Here we show that stable droplets of uniform and tuneable size can be produced through…
Recent theoretical studies found that mixtures of active and passive colloidal particles phase separate but only at very high activity ratio. The high value poses serious obstacles for experimental exploration of this phenomenon. Here we…
We theoretically study mixtures of chemically-interacting particles, which produce or consume a chemical to which they are attracted or repelled, in the most general case of many coexisting species. We find a new class of active phase…
Biomolecular condensates in cells are often rich in catalytically-active enzymes. This is particularly true in the case of the large enzymatic complexes known as metabolons, which contain different enzymes that participate in the same…
Active nematics are out-of-equilibrium systems in which energy injection at the microscale drives emergent collective behaviors, from spontaneous flows to active turbulence. While the dynamics of these systems have been extensively studied,…
Microphase separation is common in active biological systems as exemplified by the separation of RNA and DNA-rich phases in the cell nucleus driven by the transcriptional activity of polymerase enzymes acting similarly to amphiphiles in a…
Mixtures of nematic liquid crystals and isotropic fluids display a diverse range of phase behaviors, arising from the coupling between orientational order and concentration fluctuations. In this review, we introduce a simplified…
Emulsions ripen with an average droplet size increasing in time. In chemically active emulsions, coarsening can be absent, leading to a non-equilibrium steady state with mono-disperse droplet sizes. By considering a minimal model for phase…
Controlling interfaces of phase separating fluid mixtures is key to creating diverse functional soft materials. Traditionally, this is accomplished with surface-modifying chemical agents. Using experiment and theory, we study how mechanical…
We review recent experimental, numerical, and analytical results on active suspensions of self-propelled colloidal beads moving in (quasi) two dimensions. Active colloids form part of the larger theme of active matter, which is noted for…
Coupling between chemical fuel consumption and phase separation can lead to condensation at a nonequilibrium steady state, resulting in phase behaviors that are not described by equilibrium thermodynamics. Theoretical models of such…
We use a continuum, two-fluid approach to study a mixture of two active nematic fluids. Even in the absence of thermodynamically-driven ordering, for mixtures of different activities we observe turbulent microphase separation, where domains…
We use numerical simulations to study the phase behavior of self-propelled spherical and dumbbellar particles interacting via micro-phase separation inducing potentials. Our results indicate that under the appropriate conditions, it is…
The transport properties of colloidal particles in active liquids have been studied extensively. It has led to a deeper understanding of the interactions between passive and active particles. However, the phase behavior of colloidal…
Membrane shape fluctuations induce attractive interactions between rigid inclusions. Previous analytical studies showed that the fluctuation-induced pair interactions are rather small compared to thermal energies, but also that multi-body…
Liquid-liquid phase separation has emerged as a fundamental mechanism underlying intracellular organization, with evidence for it being reported in numerous different systems. However, there is a growing concern regarding the lack of…
Phase separation has recently emerged as an important organizational principle in the dense and heterogeneous environment within living cells. Here, we use a synthetic system to show that compressive stresses in a polymer network suppress…
We explore phase separation and kinetic arrest in a model active colloidal system consisting of self-propelled, hard-core particles with nonconvex shapes. The passive limit of the model, namely cross-shaped particles on a square lattice,…
Phase separation dynamics with an initially non-uniform concentration are studied. Critical and off-critical behavior is observed simultaneously. A mechanism for an expanding phase separated region is demonstrated and the time dependence of…
These lecture notes describe a basic theory of chemically active droplets, which are droplets kept away from equilibrium by driven chemical reactions. The notes assume a basic familiarity with equilibrium thermodynamics of phase separation,…