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Many biological microorganisms and artificial microswimmers react to external cues of environmental gradients by changing their swimming directions. We study here the behavior of eukarytic flagellated microswimmers in linear viscosity…
We present a general theoretical analysis of semiflexible filaments subject to viscous drag or point forcing. These are the relevant forces in dynamic experiments designed to measure biopolymer bending moduli. By analogy with the ``Stokes…
We study the mobilization of an oil droplet in a deformable, actuated constricted tube subjected to two different actuation mechanisms: hydrodynamic actuation (oscillatory body force in the fluid) and dynamic wall actuation (oscillatory…
The transport of motile entities across modulated energy landscapes plays an important role in a range of phenomena in biology, colloidal science and solid-state physics. Here, an easily implementable strategy that allows for the collective…
We describe a setup to perform systematic studies on the spreading of droplets of complex fluids under microgravity conditions. Tweaking the gravitational acceleration under which droplets are deposited provides access to different regimes…
Droplets, sub-millilitre liquid volumes with at least one interface, have traditionally served as compartments for storing, transporting, and delivering materials. Beyond familiar applications in food, coatings, and consumer goods, they…
Manipulating micro-scale object plays paramount roles in a wide range of fundamental researches and applications. At micro-scale, various methods have been developed in the past decades, including optical, electric, magnetic, aerodynamic…
Damped-driven systems are ubiquitous in science, however the damping and driving mechanisms are often quite convoluted. This manuscript presents an experimental and theoretical investigation of a fluidic droplet on a vertically vibrating…
We introduce a new concept for the manipulation of fluid flow around three-dimensional bodies. Inspired by transformation optics, the concept is based on a mathematical idea of coordinate transformations and physically implemented with…
We consider a liquid droplet which is propelled solely by internal flow. In a simple model, this flow is generated by an autonomous actuator, which moves on a prescribed trajectory inside the droplet. In a biological system, the device…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into mechanical work to produce autonomous motion, and exhibit striking collective dynamics that biology relies on for essential functions. Controlling those dynamics and transport in…
Liquid drops on soft solids generate strong deformations below the contact line, resulting from a balance of capillary and elastic forces. The movement of these drops may cause strong, potentially singular dissipation in the soft solid.…
Locomotion is typically studied either in continuous media where bodies and legs experience forces generated by the flowing medium, or on solid substrates dominated by friction. In the former, centralized coordination is believed to…
Grasping, in both biological and engineered mechanisms, can be highly sensitive to the gripper and object morphology, as well as perception, and motion planning. Here we circumvent the need for feedback or precise planning by using an array…
The overall traffic of droplets in a network of microfluidic channels is strongly influenced by the liquid properties of the moving droplets. In particular, the effective hydrodynamic resistance of individual droplets plays a key role in…
It is demonstrated that non-coalescent droplets of acetone can be formed on liquid substrates. The fluid flows around and in an acetone droplet hovering on water are recorded to shed light on the mechanisms which might lead to…
Droplet velocities used in impact studies were investigated using high-speed photography. It was determined that droplets do not reach terminal velocity before a typical impact, raising the question of how to predict impact velocity. This…
We develop and analyze a model for ratchet-driven macroscopic transport of a continuous phase. The transport relies on a field-induced dewetting-spreading cycle of a liquid film with a free surface based on a switchable, spatially…
Self-propelling active matter relies on the conversion of energy from the undirected, nanoscopic scale to directed, macroscopic motion. One of the challenges in the design of synthetic active matter lies in the control of dynamic states, or…
First principle gyrokinetic simulation of the edge turbulent transport in toroidal plasmas finds a reverse trend in the turbulent transport coefficients under strong gradients. It is found that there exist both linear and nonlinear critical…