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In systems possessing spatial or dynamical symmetry breaking, Brownian motion combined with symmetric external input signals, deterministic or random, alike, can assist directed motion of particles at the submicron scales. In such cases,…
Solid particles floating at a liquid interface exhibit a long-ranged attraction mediated by surface tension. In the absence of bulk elasticity, this is the dominant lateral interaction of mechanical origin. Here we show that an analogous…
In the last 20 years, active matter has been a very successful research field, bridging the fundamental physics of nonequilibrium thermodynamics with applications in robotics, biology, and medicine. This field deals with active particles,…
Understanding the on-chip motion of magnetic particles in a microfluidic environment is key to realizing magnetic particle-based Lab-on-a-chip systems for medical diagnostics. In this work, a simulation model is established to quantify the…
Passive filtering is a common strategy used to reduce airborne disease transmission and particulate contaminants in buildings and individual covers. The engineering of high-performance filters with relatively low flow resistance but high…
Microswimmers and active colloids often move in confined systems, including those involving interfaces. Such interfaces, especially at the microscale, may deform in response to the stresses of the flow created by the active particle. We…
Additive manufacturing is an expanding multidisciplinary field encompassing applications including medical devices, aerospace components, microfabrication strategies, and artificial organs. Among additive manufacturing approaches,…
Recent experiments have shown that liquid drops on highly deformable substrates exhibit mutual interactions. This is similar to the Cheerios effect, the capillary interaction of solid particles at a liquid interface, but now the roles of…
We present a versatile experimental apparatus for exploring rotational motion through the interplay between the moment of inertia, torque and rotational kinetic energy. The heart of this experiment uses a 3D printed wheel along with easily…
New additive manufacturing methods are needed to realize more complex soft robots. One example is soft fluidic robotics, which exploits fluidic power and stiffness gradients. Porous structures are an interesting type for this approach, as…
A rigid cylinder placed on a soft gel deforms its surface. When multiple cylinders are placed on the surface, they interact with each other via the topography of the deformed gel which serves as an energy landscape; as they move, the…
Designing microscopic and nanoscopic self-propelled particles and characterising their motion has become a major scientific challenge over the past decades. To this purpose, phoretic effects, namely propulsion mechanisms relying on local…
Chiral active particles are able to draw energy from the environment to self-propel in the form of rotation. We describe an experimental arrangement wherein chiral objects, spinners, floating on the surface of a vibrated fluid rotate due to…
Active motion at complex fluid-fluid interfaces is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature. However, an intriguing question that is not fully addressed is how active motion affects and gets influenced by its complex environment. Here, we design a…
Surfactant distribution heterogeneities at a fluid/fluid interface trigger the Marangoni effect, i.e. a bulk flow due to a surface tension gradient. The influence of surfactant solubility in the bulk on these flows remains incompletely…
Self-assembly of nanoparticles at fluid-fluid interfaces is a promising route to fabricate functional materials from the bottom-up. However, directing and controlling particles into highly tunable and predictable structures -- while…
Direct design of complex functional materials would revolutionize technologies ranging from printable organs to novel clean energy devices. However, even incremental steps towards designing functional materials have proven challenging. If…
In a bilayered system of particles with wake-mediated interactions, the action-reaction symmetry for the effective forces between particles of different layers is broken. Under quite general conditions we show that, if the interaction…
We investigate the steady-state organisation of active particles residing on an interface. Particle activity induces interface deformations, while the local shape of the interface guides particle movement. We consider multiple species of…
We develop a computational model to simulate the immediate post-impact spreading behaviour of surfactant-laden drops that impact a flat and solid surface. The model is built on the InterFoam solver (OpenFOAM software), which uses the…