Related papers: Mechanochemical Active Ratchet
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…
Micro/nanoliter droplet is capable of achieving versatile applications with tiny volume and substantial surface energy, which is a big plus over bulk liquid. Yet, the contradiction of elaborate manipulation and enough power is still a…
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…
The transport of molecules in confined media is subject to entropic barriers. So theoretically, asymmetry of the confinement length may lead to molecular ratchets with entropy as the only driving force for the biased transport. We address…
Atomic structures of nanomaterials are inherently dynamic, continuously reshaped through interactions with chemical species and external stimuli. Such dynamics are further amplified as the size and dimensionality of nanomaterials are…
We study the dynamics of vortices in an asymmetric ring channel driven by an external current I in a Corbino setup. The asymmetric potential can rectify the motion of vortices and cause a net flow without any unbiased external drive, which…
The interaction between nano- or micro-sized particles and cell membranes is of crucial importance in many biological and biomedical applications such as drug and gene delivery to cells and tissues. During their cellular uptake, the…
Theoretical analysis and fully atomistic molecular dynamics simulations reveal a Brownian ratchet mechanism by which thermal fluctuations drive the net displacement of immiscible liquids confined in channels or pores with micro- or…
Active systems contain self-propelled particles and can spontaneously self-organize into patterns making them attractive candidates for the self-assembly of smart soft materials. One key limitation of our present understanding of these…
Biological systems rely on autonomous modes of charge transport to transmit signals, whereas conventional artificial systems typically depend on external fields, such as voltage or pressure gradients, limiting their adaptability. Here we…
When active matter particles such as swimming bacteria are placed in an asymmetric array of funnels, it has been shown that a ratchet effect can occur even in the absence of an external drive. Here we examine active ratchets for two…
Micro/nano-scale propulsion has attracted considerable recent attention due to its promise for biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery. In this paper, we report on a new experimental design and theoretical modelling of…
One of the most promising features of active systems is that they can extract energy from their environment and convert it to mechanical work. Self propelled particles enable rectification when in contact with rigid boundaries. They can…
Artificial microswimmers are a new technology with promising microfluidics and biomedical applications, such as directed cargo transport, microscale assembly, and targeted drug delivery. A fundamental barrier to realising this potential is…
We investigate analytically the motion of underdamped particles subject to a deterministic periodic potential and a periodic temperature. Despite the fact that an underamped particle experiences the temperature oscillation many times in its…
Swimming droplets are a class of active particles whose motility changes as a function of time due to shrinkage and self-avoidance of their trail. Here we combine experiments and theory to show that our non-Markovian droplet (NMD) model,…
One objective of active matter science is to unveil principles by which chaotic microscale dynamics could be transformed into useful work. A nematic liquid crystal environment offers a number of possibilities, one of which is a directional…
Synthetic microswimmers mimicking biological movements at the microscale have been developed in recent years. Actuating helical magnetic materials with a homogeneous rotating magnetic field is one of the most widespread techniques for…
We discuss the usage of ratchet mechanisms to transport a continuous phase in several micro-fluidic settings. In particular, we study the transport of a dielectric liquid in a heterogeneous ratchet capacitor that is periodically switched on…
The acoustofluidic method holds great promise for manipulating microorganisms. When exposed to the steady vortex structures of acoustic streaming flow, these microorganisms exhibit intriguing dynamic behaviors, such as hydrodynamic trapping…