Related papers: A microfluidic method for passive trapping of sper…
Investigating sperm locomotion in the presence of an external fluid flow and geometries simulating the female reproductive tract can lead to a better understanding of sperm motion during the fertilization process. In this study, using a…
Active swimmers are ubiquitous in nature, found in many diverse biological systems ranging from bacteria to vertebrate fish. Of particular importance are sperm cells which are swimmers that are crucial for the survival of many species…
Active systems -- including sperm cells, living organisms like bacteria, fish, birds, or active soft matter systems like synthetic ''microswimmers'' -- are characterized by motility, i.e., the ability to propel using their own ''engine''.…
Selecting active matter based on its motility represents a challenging task, as it requires different approaches than common separation techniques intended for separation based on, e.g., size, shape, density, and flexibility. This…
Many self-propelled microorganisms are attracted to surfaces. This makes their dynamics in restricted geometries very different from that observed in the bulk. Swimming along walls is beneficial for directing and sorting cells, but may be…
The guidance of human sperm cells under confinement in quasi 2D microchambers is investigated using a purely physical method to control their distribution. Transport property measurements and simulations are performed with dilute sperm…
Sperm swimming at low Reynolds number have strong hydrodynamic interactions when their concentration is high in vivo or near substrates in vitro. The beating tails not only propel the sperm through a fluid, but also create flow fields…
Microfluidic trapping arrays have proven to be efficient tools for various applications that require working at the single-cell level, such as cell-cell communication or fusion. Although several hydrodynamic trapping devices have already…
With the aim to parallelize and monitor biological or biochemical phenomena, trapping and immobilization of objects such as particles, droplets or cells in microfluidic devices has been an intense area of research and engineering so far.…
Teams of cooperating sperm have been found across several vertebrate and invertebrate species, ranging from sperm pairs to massive aggregates containing hundreds of cells. Although the biochemical mechanisms involved in the aggregation…
Many motile biological cells navigate along concentration gradients of signaling molecules: This chemotaxis guides for instance sperm cells from marine invertebrates, which have to find egg cells in the ocean. While chemotaxis has been…
Swimming cells and microorganisms are as diverse in their collective dynamics as they are in their individual shapes and propulsion mechanisms. Even for sperm cells, which have a stereotyped shape consisting of a cell body connected to a…
For many applications, it is important to catch collections of autonomously navigating microbes and man-made microswimmers in a controlled way. Here we propose an efficient trap to collectively capture self-propelled colloidal rods. By…
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…
Pumping fluids without an aid of an external power source are desirable in a number of applications ranging from a cooling of microelectronic circuits to Micro Total Analysis Systems (micro-TAS). Although, several microfluidic pumps exist,…
Within microcentrifuge devices, a microfluidic vortex separates larger particles from a heterogeneous suspension using inertial migration, a phenomenon that causes particles to migrate across streamlines. The ability to selectively capture…
In this paper, we experimentally quantify and analytically model rate dependent capillary heterogeneity trapping. Capillary heterogeneity trapping enhances non-wetting fluid trapping beyond pore-scale residual trapping through the isolation…
In microfluidic technologies, direct patterning of liquid without resorting to micromachined solid structures has various advantages including reduction of the frictional dissipation and the fabrication cost. This fluid dynamics video…
Microorganism motility often takes place within complex, viscoelastic fluid environments, e.g., sperm in cervicovaginal mucus and bacteria in biofilms. In such complex fluids, strains and stresses generated by the microorganism are stored…
Sperm swimming is crucial to fertilise the egg, in nature and in assisted reproductive technologies. Modelling the sperm dynamics involves elasticity, hydrodynamics, internal active forces, and out-of-equilibrium noise. Here we demonstrate…