Related papers: Self-reconfiguring colloidal active matter
Self-propelled particles can spontaneously form dense phases from a dilute suspension in a process referred to as motility-induced phase separation. The properties of the out-of-equilibrium structures that are formed are governed by the…
Controlled activity of active entities interacting with a passive environment can generate emergent system-level phenomena, positioning such systems as promising platforms for potential downstream applications in targeted drug delivery,…
Unlike biological active matter that constantly adapt to their environment, the motors of synthetic active particles are typically agnostic to their surroundings and merely operate at constant force. Here, we design colloidal active rods…
Hardly any real self-propelling or actively driven object is perfect. Thus, undisturbed motion will generally not follow straight lines but rather circular trajectories. We here address self-propelled or actively driven objects that move in…
Self-organisation is the spontaneous emergence of spatio-temporal structures and patterns from the interaction of smaller individual units. Examples are found across many scales in very different systems and scientific disciplines, from…
Micron-size self-propelling particles are often proposed as synthetic models for biological microswimmers, yet they lack internally regulated adaptation, which is central to the autonomy of their biological counterparts. Conversely,…
Colloidal particles, amphiphiles, and functionalized nanoparticles are examples of systems that frequently exhibit short-range attractions coupled with long-range repulsions. In this work, we observe striking differences in the dynamics of…
In many biological systems, the curvature of the surfaces cells live on influence their collective properties. Curvature should likewise influence the behavior of active colloidal particles. We show using molecular simulation of…
Self-assembly is traditionally described as the process through which an initially disordered system relaxes towards an equilibrium ordered phase only driven by local interactions between its building blocks. However, This definition is too…
Biological cells are able to generate intricate structures and respond to external stimuli, sculpting their membrane from within. Simplified biomimetic systems can aid in understanding the principles which govern these shape changes and…
Elastic active matter or active solid consists of self-propelled units embedded in an elastic matrix. Active solid resists deformation; the shape-preserving property and the intrinsic non-equilibrium nature make active solids a superior…
Active solids consist of elastically coupled out-of-equilibrium units performing work. They are central to autonomous processes, such as locomotion, self-oscillations and rectification, in biological systems,designer materials and robotics.…
We propose a mechanism to control the formation of stable obstructions in two-dimensional micro-channels of variable sections taking advantage of the peculiar clustering property of active systems. Under the activation of the…
Living materials such as biological tissues or bacterial colonies are collections of heterogeneous entities of different sizes, capable of autonomous motion, and often capable of cooperating. Such a degree of complexity brings to collective…
Many living and artificial systems show a similar emergent behavior and collective motions on different scales, starting from swarms of bacteria to synthetic active particles, herds of mammals and crowds of people. What all these systems…
When particles move at a constant speed and have the tendency to align their directions of motion, ordered large scale movement can emerge despite significant levels of noise. Many variants of this model of self-propelled particles have…
Active colloids self-organise to a variety of collective states, ranging from highly motile 'molecules' to complex 3D structures. Using large-scale simulations, we show that hydrodynamic interactions, together with a gravity-like aligning…
Colloidal particles can create reconfigurable nanomaterials, with applications such as color-changing, self-repairing, and self-regulating materials and reconfigurable drug delivery systems. However, top-down methods for manipulating…
The self-organised motion of vast numbers of creatures in a single direction is a spectacular example of emergent order. We recreate this phenomenon using actuated non-living components. We report here that millimetre-sized tapered rods,…
We demonstrate the emergence of self-organized structures in the course of the relaxation of an initially excited, dissipative and finite chain of interacting particles in a periodic potential towards its many particle equilibrium…