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The locomotion of microorganisms and spermatozoa in complex viscoelastic fluids is of critical importance in many biological processes such as fertilization, infection, and biofilm formation. Depending on their propulsion mechanisms,…
Artificial microswimmers are a new technology with promising microfluidics and biomedical applications, such as directed cargo transport, microscale assembly, and targeted drug delivery. A fundamental barrier to realising this potential is…
Locomotion and transport of microorganisms in fluids is an essential aspect of life. Search for food, orientation toward light, spreading of off-spring, and the formation of colonies are only possible due to locomotion. Swimming at the…
Swimming cells and microorganisms must often move though complex fluids that contain an immersed microstructure such as polymer molecules, or filaments. In many important biological processes, such as mammalian reproduction and bacterial…
With the continuing rapid development of artificial microrobots and active particles, questions of microswimmer guidance and control are becoming ever more relevant and prevalent. In both the applications and theoretical study of such…
Microrobots have the potential to impact many areas such as microsurgery, micromanipulation and minimally invasive sensing. Due to their small size, microrobots swim in a regime that is governed by low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. In this…
Nanoswimmers are ubiquitous in bio- and nano-technology but are extremely challenging to measure due to their minute size and driving forces. A simple method is proposed for detecting the elusive physical features of nanoswimmers by…
The properties of biological microswimmers are to a large extent determined by fluid-mediated interactions, which govern their propulsion, perception of their surrounding, and the steering of their motion for feeding or in pursuit.…
The development of multifunctional and biocompatible microrobots for biomedical applications relies on achieving locomotion through viscous fluids. Here, we describe a framework for swimming in homogeneous magnetoelastic membranes composed…
Microorganisms and synthetic microswimmers often encounter complex environments consisting of networks of obstacles embedded into viscous fluids. Such settings include biological media, such as mucus with filamentous networks, as well as…
Biological microswimmers such as bacteria and sperm cells often encounter complex biological fluid environments. Here we use the well-known squirmer microswimmer model to show the importance of the local fluid microstructure and…
Micro-scale swimming robots have been envisaged for many medical applications such as targeted drug delivery, where the microrobot will be expected to navigate in a fluid through channels carrying a payload. Alternatively, in many cases,…
Various microorganisms and some mammalian cells are able to swim in viscous fluids by performing nonreciprocal body deformations, such as rotating attached flagella or by distorting their entire body. In order to perform chemotaxis, i.e. to…
Synthetic microswimmers show great promise in biomedical applications such as drug delivery and microsurgery. Their locomotion, however, is subject to stringent constraints due to the dominance of viscous over inertial forces at low…
Microswimmers can acquire information on the surrounding fluid by sensing mechanical queues. They can then navigate in response to these signals. We analyse this navigation by combining deep reinforcement learning with direct numerical…
We demonstrate with experiments and simulations how microscopic self-propelled particles navigate through environments presenting complex spatial features, which mimic the conditions inside cells, living organisms and future lab-on-a-chip…
Biological and artificial microswimmers often have to propel through a variety of environments, ranging from heterogeneous suspending media to strong geometrical confinement. Under confinement, local flow fields generated by microswimmers,…
Microscopic self-propelled swimmers capable of autonomous navigation through complex environments provide appealing opportunities for localization, pick-up and delivery of micro-and nanoscopic objects. Inspired by motile cells and bacteria,…
Transport of material across liquid interfaces is ubiquitous for living cells and is also a crucial step in drug delivery and in many industrial processes. The fluids that are present on either side of the interfaces will usually have…
Effective mixing of fluids at the microfluidic scale is important for future applications in biology, medicine, and chemistry. A promising type of micromixers are magnetic filaments, which can be activated by an external magnetic field.…