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Chemotaxis and auto-chemotaxis play an important role in many essential biological processes. We present a self-propelling artificial swimmer system which exhibits chemotaxis as well as negative auto-chemotaxis. Oil droplets in an aqueous…
Molecular dynamics studies of nono-sized rigid grains, droplets and bubbles in nano-sized pores indicate that the drag force may have a hydrodynamic form if the moving object is dense and small compared to the pore diameter. Otherwise, the…
Conventional slippery surfaces show isotropic drop mobility in all directions, but many applications require directional drop motion along a particular path only. In previous studies, researchers used topographic substrates, together with…
The wetting of soft elastic substrates exhibits many features that have no counterpart on rigid surfaces. Modelling the detailed elastocapillary interactions is challenging, and has so far been limited to single contact lines or single…
The aim of this work is to quantify the spatio-temporal dynamics of flow-driven amoeboid locomotion in small ($\sim$100 $\mu$m) fragments of the true slime mold \phys {\it polycephalum}. In this model organism, cellular contraction drives…
The Leidenfrost effect enables droplets to levitate above a solid surface, significantly reducing the resistance to droplet motion. In this study, a spiked surface is utilized to achieve fast directional transport of Leidenfrost droplets,…
Cells control fluid flows with a spatial and temporal precision that far exceeds the capabilities of current microfluidic technologies. Cells achieve this superior spatio-temporal control by harnessing dynamic networks of cytoskeleton and…
While fluids near a solid surface are at the core of applications in energy storage/conversion, electrochemistry/electrowetting and adsorption/catalysis, their nanoscale behavior remains only partially deciphered. Beyond conventional…
Here, we study the coalescence of two droplets that are moving in the same direction on a soft surface; the motion of the droplets is caused by a gradient in the surface stiffness. As reference, stationary coalescence of the same droplets…
We report experimental observation of a kind of fast spontaneous movements of water drops on surfaces of cones with diameters from 0.1 to 1.5 mm. The observed maximum speed (0.22 m/s) under ambient conditions were at least two orders of…
We introduce a novel technique for grabbing water with a flexible solid. This new passive pipetting mechanism was inspired by floating flowers and relies purely on the coupling of the elasticity of thin plates and the hydrodynamic forces at…
We investigate the problem of transport of a single fluid droplet through a non-wettable superhydrophobic porous medium. A mechanical soft body model is developed and used to simulate the process of pushing fluid droplets through pore space…
Active components incorporated in materials generate motion by inducing conformational changes in response to external fields. Magnetic fields are particularly interesting as they can actuate materials remotely. Millimeter-sized ferrofluid…
Anisotropically wetting substrates enable useful control of droplet behavior across a range of applications. Usually, these involve chemically or physically patterning the substrate surface, or applying gradients in properties like…
Viscophoresis refers to the transport of suspended nanoparticles driven by a steep viscosity gradient. This work investigates this new transport effect using a random walk simulation. By modelling position-dependent Brownian motion,…
Droplet interactions with solid surfaces are fundamental to natural phenomena and hold significant commercial relevance across diverse applications. While the impingement dynamics of conventional aqueous droplets on solid substrates are…
Recently, there is much interest in droplet condensation on soft or liquid/liquid-like substrates. Droplets can deform soft and liquid interfaces resulting in a wealth of phenomena not observed on hard, solid surfaces (e.g., increased…
We numerically study the effect of an active turbulent environment on a passive deformable droplet. The system is simulated using coupled hydrodynamic and nematodynamic equations for nematic liquid crystals with an active stress which is…
Motile biological cells in tissue often display the phenomenon of durotaxis, i.e. they tend to move towards stiffer parts of substrate tissue. The mechanism for this behavior is not completely understood. We consider simplified models for…
An evaporating droplet is a dynamic system in which flow is spontaneously generated to minimize the surface energy, dragging particles to the borders and ultimately resulting in the so-called "coffee-stain effect". The situation becomes…