Related papers: Active nematic pumps
To study the impact of active systems on their surroundings, we introduce a model that couples an active nematic fluid to an isotropic substrate fluid via friction. We numerically show that as the active layer develops turbulence, the…
We study the structure and dynamics of the interface separating a passive fluid from a microtubule-based active fluid. Turbulent-like active flows power giant interfacial fluctuations, which exhibit pronounced asymmetry between regions of…
Microfluidics has enabled a revolution in the manipulation of small volumes of fluids. Controlling flows at larger scales and faster rates, or $\textit{macrofluidics}$, has broad applications but involves the unique complexities of inertial…
The research fields of microfluidics and soft robotics both involve complex small-scale internal channel networks, embedded within a solid structure. This work examines leveraging viscous peeling as a mechanism to create and activate soft…
Many microfluidic devices use macroscopic pressure differentials to overcome viscous friction and generate flows in microchannels. In this work, we investigate how the chemical and geometric properties of the channel walls can drive a net…
Active fluids have applications in micromixing, but little is known about the mixing kinematics of systems with spatiotemporally-varying activity. To investigate, UV-activated caged ATP was used to activate controlled regions of…
Active fluids generate spontaneous, often chaotic mesoscale flows. Harnessing these flows to drive embedded soft materials into structures with controlled length scales and lifetimes is a key challenge at the interface between the fields of…
We demonstrate the generation of diverse material flow regimes in nematic liquid cells as driven by time-variable active surface anchoring, including no-net flow, oscillatory flow, steady flow, and pulsating flow. Specifically, we…
Amorphous glassy materials of diverse nature -- concentrated emulsions, granular materials, pastes, molecular glasses -- display complex flow properties, intermediate between solid and liquid, which are at the root of their use in many…
We use numerical modelling to study the flow patterns of an active nematic confined in a cylindrical capillary, considering both planar and homeotropic boundary conditions. We find that active flow emerges not only along the capillary axis…
The emergence of a submerged vortex upstream of a pump can reduce pump intake efficiency and cause structural damage. In this study, we consider the use of active flow control with steady blowing to increase the pressure distribution within…
We investigate the turbulent dynamics of a two-dimensional active nematic liquid crystal con- strained on a curved surface. Using a combination of hydrodynamic and particle-based simulations, we demonstrate that the fundamental structural…
Due to scaling laws, in microfluidic, flows are laminar. Consequently, mixing between two liquids is mainly obtained by natural diffusion which may take a long time or equivalently requires centimetre length channels. To reduce time and…
We extend the continuum theories of active nematohydrodynamics to model a two-fluid mixture with separate velocity fields for each fluid component, coupled through a viscous drag. The model is used to study an active nematic fluid, mixed…
Active matter embraces systems that self-organize at different length and time scales, often exhibiting turbulent flows. Here, we use a quasi-two-dimensional nematically ordered layer of a protein-based active gel to experimentally…
The controllability of passive microparticles that are advected with the fluid flow generated by an actively controlled one is studied. The particles are assumed to be suspended in a viscous fluid and well separated so that the far-field…
An ion-exchange-resin-based microfluidic pump is introduced that utilizes trace amounts of ions to generate fluid flows. We show experimentally that our pump operates in almost deionized water for periods exceeding 24h and induces fluid…
We develop a hydrodynamic description of self-generated electrolyte flow in capillaries whose bounding walls feature both non-uniform distributions of charge and non-uniform active ionic fluxes. The hydrodynamic velocity arising in such a…
Controlling fluidic flows in active droplets is crucial in developing intelligent models to understand and mimic single-celled microorganisms. Typically, these fluidic flows are affected by the interfacial dynamics of chemical agents. We…
We use a continuum, two-fluid approach to study a mixture of two active nematic fluids. Even in the absence of thermodynamically-driven ordering, for mixtures of different activities we observe turbulent microphase separation, where domains…