Related papers: Self-propelling colloidal finite state machines
To spontaneously break their intrinsic symmetry and self-propel at the micron scale, isotropic active colloidal particles and droplets exploit the non-linear convective transport of chemical solutes emitted/consumed at their surface by the…
Plasmonic nanoparticles (NPs) integrated within thermoresponsive polymeric microgels provide a versatile platform for the realization of stimuli-responsive optical materials, where the microgel volume phase transition enables dynamic…
Colloids self-assemble into various organized superstructures determined by particle interactions. There is a tremendous progress in both the scientific understanding and applications of self-assemblies of single-type identical particles.…
The spontaneous assembly of particles in suspension provides a strategy for inexpensive fabrication of devices with nanometer-scale control, such as single-electron transistors for memory or logic applications. A scaleable and robust method…
Controlled assembly of active-passive colloidal mixtures offers a route to reconfigurable microscale machines, but their self-assembly pathways remain poorly understood. We study the directed assembly of metallo-dielectric Janus particles…
Micrometre sized colloidal particles can be viewed as large atoms with tailorable size, shape and interactions. These building blocks can assemble into extremely rich structures and phases, in which the thermal motions of particles can be…
Living systems routinely consume energy to achieve motility, often using intricate biomolecular machinery. In this work, we show that active droplets can sustain indefinite self-propulsion of a spherical colloid in an otherwise homogeneous,…
Active colloids and externally actuated semi-flexible filaments provide basic building blocks for designing autonomously motile micro-machines. Here, we show that a passive semi-flexible filament can be actuated and transported by attaching…
Motility is a basic feature of living microorganisms, and how it works is often determined by environmental cues. Recent efforts have focused on develop- ing artificial systems that can mimic microorganisms, and in particular their…
Active colloids constitute a novel class of materials composed of colloidal-scale particles locally converting chemical energy into motility, mimicking micro-organisms. Evolving far from equilibrium, these systems display structural…
Mobile microrobots are envisioned to be useful in a wide range of high-impact applications, many of which requiring cohesive group formation to maintain self-bounded swarms in the absence of confining boundaries. Cohesive group formation…
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…
We demonstrate a simple method by which time-dependent interactions can be exploited to improve self-assembly in colloidal systems. We apply this method to two systems: a model colloid with short-ranged attractive potentials that undergoes…
In colloidal suspensions, self-organization processes can be easily fueled by external fields. One particularly interesting class of phenomena occurs in monolayers of dipolar particles that are driven by rotating external fields. Here we…
We study a two-dimensional model for interacting colloidal particles which displays spontaneous clustering. Within this model we investigate the competition between the pinning to a periodic corrugation potential, and a sideways constant…
Thermo-responsive hydrogels are smart materials that rapidly switch between hydrophilic (swollen) and hydrophobic (shrunken) states when heated past a threshold temperature, resulting in order-of-magnitude changes in gel volume. Modelling…
Designing components that can robustly self-assemble into structures with biological complexity is a grand challenge for material science. Proofreading and error correction is required to improve assembly yield beyond equilibrium limits,…
We study the dynamical steady-states of a monolayer of chemically active self-phoretic colloids as a function of packing fraction and self-propulsion speed by means of Brownian dynamics simulations. We focus on the case that a chemical…
Semiconductor microelectronics are emerging as a powerful tool for building smart, autonomous robots too small to see with the naked eye. Yet a number of existing microrobot platforms, despite significant advantages in speed, robustness,…
In equilibrium, colloidal suspensions governed by short-range attractive and long-range repulsive interactions form thermodynamically stable clusters. Using Brownian dynamics computer simulations, we investigate how this equilibrium…