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Natural organisms utilize distributed actuation through their musculoskeletal systems to adapt their gait for traversing diverse terrains or to morph their bodies for varied tasks. A longstanding challenge in robotics is to emulate this…

Brownian vortexes are stochastic machines that use static non-conservative force fields to bias random thermal fluctuations into steadily circulating currents. The archetype for this class of systems is a colloidal sphere in an optical…

The purpose of this work is to present the concept of an autonomous Stirling-like engine powered by anisotropy of thermodynamic fluctuations. Specifically, simultaneous contact of a thermodynamic system with two heat baths along coupled…

Suspensions of anisotropic Brownian particles are commonly encountered in a wide array of applications such as drug delivery and manufacturing of fiber-reinforced composites. Technological applications and fundamental studies of small…

We demonstrate the use of an external field to stabilize and control defect lines connecting topological monopoles in spin ice. For definiteness we perform Brownian dynamics simulations with realistic units mimicking experimentally realized…

The connection between fundamental interactions acting in molecules in a fluid and macroscopically measured properties, such as the viscosity between colloidal particles coated with polymers, is studied here. The role that hydrodynamic and…

From synthetic active devices such as self-propelling Janus colloids to micro-organisms like bacteria, micro-algae, living cells in tissues, active fluctuations are ubiquitous. Thermodynamics of small systems involving thermal as well as…

Artificial soft matter systems have appeared as important tools to harness mechanical motion for microscale manipulation. Typically, this motion is driven either by the external fields or by mutual interaction between the colloids. In the…

Emerging multiphysics metamaterials offer a distinct possibility for regulating complex physical processes. However, two severe constraints still lower their functionality and tunability. First, multiphysics functionality is fixed once…

Stiff forces, which bind objects together or otherwise confine motion, are found widely in soft-matter systems - colloids with short range attractions, ligand-receptor contacts, particles in optical traps, fibres that resist stretching,…

Plastic deformation of micron-scale crystalline solids exhibits stress-strain curves with significant sample-to-sample variations. It is a pertinent question if this variability is purely random or to some extent predictable. Here we show,…

The traction on the surface of a spherical active colloid in a thermally fluctuating Stokesian fluid contains passive, active, and Brownian contributions. Here we derive these three parts systematically, by "projecting out" the fluid using…

Miniaturized, self-propelled locomotors use chemo-mechanical transduction mechanisms to convert fuel in the environment to autonomous motion. Recent experimental and theoretical studies demonstrate that these autonomous engines can…

We investigated three models of Brownian motors which convert rotational diffusion into directed translational motion by switching on and off a potential. In the first model a spatially asymmetric potential generates directed translational…

Microgels are soft microparticles that often exhibit thermoresponsiveness and feature a transformation at a critical temperature, referred to as the volume phase transition temperature. The question of whether this transformation occurs as…

This paper introduces DextAIRity, an approach to manipulate deformable objects using active airflow. In contrast to conventional contact-based quasi-static manipulations, DextAIRity allows the system to apply dense forces on out-of-contact…

The rectification of unbiased fluctuations, also known as the ratchet effect, is normally obtained under statistical non-equilibrium conditions. Here we propose a new ratchet mechanism where a thermal bath solicits the random rotation of an…

Despite the fundamental importance of solid--solid transitions for metallurgy, ceramics, earth science, reconfigurable materials, and colloidal matter, the details of how materials transform between two solid structures are poorly…

In the absence of environmental cues, a migrating cell performs an isotropic random motion. Recently, the breaking of this isotropy has been observed when cells move in the presence of asymmetric adhesive patterns. However, up to now the…

Extreme deformation of soft matter is central to our understanding of the effects of shock, fracture, and phase change in a variety of systems. Yet, despite, the increasing interest in this area, far-from-equilibrium behaviours of soft…