Related papers: Dynamic control of active droplets using light-res…
There are many examples of driven and active matter systems containing particles that exhibit circular motion with different chiralities, such as swimming bacteria near surfaces or certain types of self-driven colloidal particles. Circular…
By equilibrating condensed DNA arrays against reservoirs of known osmotic stress and examining them with several structural probes, it has been possible to achieve a detailed thermodynamic and structural characterization of the change…
Conventional phase segregation is controlled by a positive interfacial tension, which implies that the system relaxes towards a state in which the interfacial area (or length) is minimized, typically manifesting as a single droplet that…
Applications such as digital microfluidics and bio-diagnostics rely on droplet locomotion. A prominent example of such motion is durotaxis, a phenomenon that requires a stiffness gradient along a surface for the transport of liquids, cells,…
Microorganisms navigating through narrow spaces encounter significant hydrodynamic challenges. To overcome these constraints and sustain efficient motion, they employ adaptive strategies, including adaptive oscillatory body deformations.…
Swimmers and self-propelled particles are physical models for the collective behaviour and motility of a wide variety of living systems, such as bacteria colonies, bird flocks and fish schools. Such artificial active materials are amenable…
Active particles, including swimming microorganisms, autophoretic colloids and droplets, are known to self-organize into ordered structures at fluid-solid boundaries. The entrainment of particles in the attractive parts of their spontaneous…
Dense suspensions of swimming bacteria are known to exhibit collective behaviour arising from the interplay of steric and hydrodynamic interactions. Unconfined suspensions exhibit transient, recurring vortices and jets, whereas those…
In the field of microdroplet manipulation, optical tweezers have been used to form and grow droplets, to transport them, or to measure forces between droplet pairs. However, the exploration of out-of-equilibrium phenomena in optically…
Guiding active motion is important for targeted delivery, sensing, and search tasks. Many active systems exhibit circular swimming, ubiquitous in chemical, physical, and biological systems, that biases motion and reduces transport…
Microswimmers display an intriguing ability to navigate through fluids with spatially varying viscosity, a behavior known as viscotaxis, which plays a crucial role in guiding their motion. In this study, we reveal that the orientation…
We investigate the dynamics of an active particle in two-dimensional spherical crystals, which provide an ideal environment to illustrate the interplay of active particle and crystallographic defects. A moving active particle is observed to…
Earlier works found out spontaneous directional motion of liquid droplets on hydrophilic conical surfaces, however, not hydrophobic case. Here we show that droplets on any surface may take place spontaneous directional motion without…
We experimentally study the motion of light-activated colloidal microswimmers in a viscoelastic fluid. We find that, in such a non-Newtonian environment, the active colloids undergo an unexpected transition from enhanced angular diffusion…
We show that the motion of ferroelectric liquid sessile droplets deposited on a ferroelectric lithium niobate substrate can be controlled by a light beam of moderate intensity irradiating the substrate at a distance of several droplet…
A droplet placed on a hydrophilic conical fiber tends to move toward the end of larger radii due to capillary action. Experimental investigations are performed to explore the dynamics of droplets with varying viscosities and volumes on…
We investigate the collective dynamics of self-propelled droplets, confined in a one dimensional micro-fluidic channel. On one hand, neighboring droplets align and form large trains of droplets moving in the same direction. On the other…
We propose a highly efficient mechanism to rectify the motion of active particles by exploiting particle-wall alignment interactions. Through numerical simulations of active particles' dynamics in a narrow channel, we demonstrate that a…
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…
Topological defects in active liquid crystals can be confined by introducing gradients of activity. Here, we examine the dynamical behavior of two defects confined by a sharp gradient of activity that separates an active circular region and…