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We study different types of microswimmers moving in channels with varying cross section and thereby interacting hydrodynamically with the channel walls. Starting from the Smoluchowski equation for a dilute suspension, for which interactions…
The aim of this paper is to describe the self-propulsion of a micro-robot (or micro-swimmer) consisting of $N$ spheres moving along a fixed line. The spheres are linked to each other by arms with the lengths changing periodically. For the…
The control over DNA elongation in nanofluidic devices holds great potential for large-scale genomic analysis. So far, the manipulation of DNA in nanochannels has been mostly carried out with electrophoresis and seldom with hydrodynamics,…
Torque-driven microscale swimming robots, or microrotors, hold significant potential in biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery, and micromanipulation. This paper addresses the challenge of…
Despite their importance in many biological, ecological and physical processes, microorganismal fluid flows under tight confinement have not been investigated experimentally. Strong screening of Stokelets in this geometry suggests that the…
We propose two-dimensional organic poly(heptazine imide) (PHI) carbon nitride microparticles as light-driven microswimmers in various ionic and biological media. Their demonstrated high-speed (15-23 $\mu$m/s) swimming in multi-component…
The current understanding of motility through body shape deformation of microorganisms and the knowledge of fluid flows at the microscale provides ample examples for mimicry and design of soft microrobots. In this work, a two-dimensional…
Inspired by the classical Kepler and Rutherford problem, we investigate an analogous set-up in the context of active microswimmers: the behavior of a deformable microswimmer in a swirl flow. First we identify new steady bound states in the…
We present a multiscale approach to the modeling of polymer dynamics in the presence of a fluid solvent. The approach combines Langevin Molecular Dynamics (MD) techniques with a mesoscopic Lattice-Boltzmann (LB) method for the solvent…
Interactions between microorganisms and their complex flowing environments are essential in many biological systems. We develop a model for microswimmer dynamics in non-Newtonian Poiseuille flows. We predict that swimmers in…
Natural habitats of most living microorganisms are distinguished by a complex structure often formed by a porous medium such as soil. The dynamics and transport properties of motile microorganisms are strongly affected by crowded and…
Depending on multiple parameters, soft robots can exhibit different modes of locomotion that are difficult to model numerically. As a result, improving their performance is complex, especially in small-scale systems characterized by low…
Hot microswimmers are self-propelled Brownian particles that exploit local heating for their directed self-thermophoretic motion. We provide a pedagogical overview of the key physical mechanisms underlying this promising new technology. It…
Droplet microfluidics offers a versatile platform for analyzing liquid samples. Despite its potential, there is a lack of techniques that allow to reliably probe individual circulating droplets. The prospect of combining droplet…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion depending on the environment in which they find themselves. One mode is swimming by blebbing or other shape changes, and in this paper we analyze a class of…
Biological microswimmers are known to navigate upstream of an external flow (positive rheotaxis) in trajectories ranging from linear, spiral to oscillatory. Such rheotaxis stems from the interplay between the motion and complex shapes of…
Magnetotaxis is a well known phenomenon in swimming microorganisms which sense magnetic fields e.g. by incorporating crystalline magnetosomes. In designing artificial active matter with tunable dynamics, external magnetic fields can provide…
Surface interactions provide a class of mechanisms which can be employed for propulsion of micro- and nanometer sized particles. We investigate the related efficiency of externally and self-propelled swimmers. A general scaling relation is…
Microfluidic devices manufactured from soft polymeric materials have emerged as a paradigm for cheap, disposable and easy-to-prototype fluidic platforms for integrating chemical and biological assays and analyses. The interplay between the…
Effective robot navigation in unseen environments is a challenging task that requires precise control actions at high frequencies. Recent advances have framed it as an image-goal-conditioned control problem, where the robot generates…