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Self-propelled phoretic colloids have recently emerged as a promising avenue for the design of artificial swimmers. These swimmers combine purely phoretic interactions with intricate hydrodynamics which critically depend on the swimmer…
Many fascinating phenomena such as large-scale collective flows, enhanced fluid mixing and pattern formation have been observed in so-called active fluids, which are composed of particles that can absorb energy and dissipate it into the…
Plants have developed intricate mechanisms to adapt to changing light conditions. Besides photo- and helio- tropism -- the differential growth towards light and the diurnal motion with respect to sunlight -- chloroplast motion acts as a…
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…
Active particles with their characteristic feature of self-propulsion are regarded as the simplest models for motility in living systems. The accumulation of active particles in low activity regions has led to the general belief that…
Swimming micro-organisms such as flagellated bacteria and sperm cells have fascinating locomotion capabilities. Inspired by their natural motion, there is an ongoing effort to develop artificial robotic nano-swimmers for potential in-body…
Photosynthetic organisms rely on a series of self-assembled nanostructures with tuned electronic energy levels in order to transport energy from where it is collected by photon absorption, to reaction centers where the energy is used to…
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 demonstrate with experiments and simulations how microscopic self-propelled particles navigate through environments presenting complex spatial features, which mimic the conditions inside cells, living organisms and future lab-on-a-chip…
The complex interactions underlying collective motion in biological systems give rise to emergent behaviours such as flocking, sorting, and cooperative transport. These dynamics often involve species with different motilities coordinating…
We describe colloidal Janus particles with metallic and dielectric faces that swim vigorously when illuminated by defocused optical tweezers without consuming any chemical fuel. Rather than wandering randomly, these optically-activated…
Self-organisation is driven by the interactions between the individual components of a system mediated by the environment, and is one of the most important strategies used by many biological systems to develop complex and functional…
We investigate how light polarization affects the motion of photo-responsive algae, \textit{Euglena gracilis}. In a uniformly polarized field, cells swim approximately perpendicular to the polarization direction and form a nematic state…
We develop the hydrodynamic theory of dry, polar ordered, active matter (``flocking") with autochemotaxis; i.e., self-propelled entities moving in the same direction, each emitting a substance which attracts the others (e.g., ants). We find…
Microscopic active droplets are able to swim autonomously in viscous flows: this puzzling feature stems from solute exchanges with the surrounding fluid via surface reactions or their spontaneous solubilisation, and the interfacial flows…
An artificial microswimmer drifts in response to spatio-temporal modulations of an activating suspension medium. We consider two competing mechanisms capable of influencing its tactic response: angular fluctuations, which help it explore…
With exquisite precision and reproducibility, cells orchestrate the cooperative action of thousands of nanometer-sized molecular motors to carry out mechanical tasks at much larger length scales, such as cell motility, division and…
Active colloids self-organise to a variety of collective states, ranging from highly motile 'molecules' to complex 3D structures. Using large-scale simulations, we show that hydrodynamic interactions, together with a gravity-like aligning…
When tiny soft ferromagnetic particles are placed along a liquid interface and exposed to a vertical magnetic field, the balance between capillary attraction and magnetic repulsion leads to self-organization into well-defined patterns.…
Many motile microorganisms adjust their swimming motion relative to the gravitational field and thus counteract sedimentation to the ground. This gravitactic behavior is often the result of an inhomogeneous mass distribution which aligns…