Related papers: Dynamic control of active droplets using light-res…

Active forces occurring within cells can drive crucial biological processes that involve spontaneous organization and shape change, such as cell division. Motivated by recent in vitro experiments of nematic droplets of cytoskeletal…

Biomolecular condensates play a central role in the spatial organization of living matter. Their formation is now well understood as a form of liquid-liquid phase separation that occurs very far from equilibrium. For instance, they can be…

The growing interest in the non-equilibrium assembly of colloidal particles in active liquids is driven by the motivation to create novel structures endowed with tunable properties unattainable within the confines of equilibrium systems.…

Interactions among biologically active agents is facilitated by their self-generated chemical and hydrodynamic fields. In order to elucidate the pair-wise interactions between such micro-organisms, we employ active droplets as a model…

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…

We study the dynamics of an active gel droplet with imposed orientational anchoring (normal or planar) at its surface. We find that if the activity is large enough droplets subject to strong anchoring spontaneously start to rotate, with the…

We numerically investigate the phase behavior of thick shells of cholesteric liquid crystals with tangential anchoring at the shell boundary. For achiral liquid crystal, we demonstrate a thickness-dependent transition from a configuration…

Suspensions of self-propelled objects represent a novel paradigm in colloidal science. In such active baths traditional concepts, such as Brownian motion, fluctuation-dissipation relations, and work extraction from heat reservoirs, must be…

Active systems, from bacterial suspensions to cellular monolayers, are continuously driven out of equilibrium by local injection of energy from their constituent elements and exhibit turbulent-like and chaotic patterns. Here we demonstrate…

We explore the diffusion dynamics of a Brownian microparticle in a lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal (LCLC). In the planarly oriented nematic phase, the microparticle exhibits levitation and anisotropic two-dimensional diffusion. Upon…

This paper considers the interaction between two droplets placed on a substrate in immediate vicinity. We show here that when the two droplets are of different fluids and especially when one of the droplet is highly volatile, a wealth of…

Active matter describes materials whose constituents are driven out of equilibrium by continuous energy consumption, for instance from ATP. Due to the orientable character of the constituents, active suspensions can attain liquid…

Chemically active droplets provide simple models for cell-like systems that can grow and divide. Such active droplet systems are driven away from thermodynamic equilibrium and turn over chemically, which corresponds to a simple metabolism.…

Passive droplet transport mechanisms, in which continuous external energy input is not required for motion, have received significant attention in recent years. Experimental studies of such mechanisms often ignore, or use careful treatments…

The inkjet-fabricated liquid crystal (LC) droplet device not only capitalizes on the intrinsic birefringence properties of liquid crystals but also leverages the hemispherical shape of droplet devices on substrates. This configuration…

Geometric confinements are frequently encountered in the biological world and strongly affect the stability, topology, and transport properties of active suspensions in viscous flow. Based on a far-field analytical model, the…

Cells control the size and organization of biomolecular condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), but multiple mechanisms likely contribute to this control and remain to be fully elucidated. Here we propose a…

Bacterial assemblies exhibit rich collective behaviors that control their biological functions, making them a relevant object of study from an active matter physics perspective. Dense bacterial suspensions self-organize into distinct…

We report an experimental study on the manipulation of colloidal particles in a drop sitting on a hydrogel. The manipulation is achieved by diffusiophoresis, which describes a directed motion of particles induced by solute gradients. By…

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…