Related papers: Motility-dependent selective transport of active m…
Active systems -- including sperm cells, living organisms like bacteria, fish, birds, or active soft matter systems like synthetic ''microswimmers'' -- are characterized by motility, i.e., the ability to propel using their own ''engine''.…
Sperm motility is a prerequisite for male fertility. Enhancing the concentration of motile sperms in assisted reproductive technologies - for human and animal reproduction - is typically achieved through aggressive methods such as…
Active matter systems being in a non-equilibrium state, exhibit complex behaviors such as self-organization and giving rise to emergent phenomena. There are many examples of active particles with biological origins, including bacteria and…
Understanding flow and transport of bacteria in porous media is crucial to technologies such as bioremediation, biomineralization or enhanced oil recovery. While physicochemical bacteria filtration is well-documented, recent studies showed…
How systems are endowed with migration capacity is a fascinating question with implications ranging from the design of novel active systems to the control of microbial populations. Bacteria, which can be found in a variety of environments,…
Motility is an essential factor for an organism's survival and diversification. With the advent of novel single-cell technologies, analytical frameworks and theoretical methods, we can begin to probe the complex lives of microscopic motile…
Numerous physical models have been proposed to explain how cell motility emerges from internal activity, mostly focused on how crawling motion arises from internal processes. Here we offer a classification of self-propulsion mechanisms…
We theoretically predict and experimentally demonstrate that several different particle species can be separated from each other by means of a ratchet device, consisting of periodically arranged triangular (ratchet) shaped obstacles. We…
It is often desirable to enhance the motility of active nano- or microscale swimmers such as, e.g., self-propelled Janus particles as agents of chemical reactions or weak sperm cells for better chances of successful fertilization. Here we…
Studies of active matter, from molecular assemblies to animal groups, have revealed two broad classes of behavior: a tendency to align yields orientational order and collective motion, whereas particle repulsion leads to self-trapping and…
Active swimmers are ubiquitous in nature, found in many diverse biological systems ranging from bacteria to vertebrate fish. Of particular importance are sperm cells which are swimmers that are crucial for the survival of many species…
We numerically examine the driven transport of an overdamped self-propelled particle through a two-dimensional array of circular obstacles. A detailed analysis of transport quantifiers (mobility and diffusivity) has been performed for two…
The control of particle trajectories in structured microfluidic environments has significantly advanced sorting technologies, most notably through deterministic lateral displacement (DLD). While previous work has largely targeted rigid,…
We provide a generic scheme to separate the particles of a mixture by their physical properties like mass, friction or size. The scheme employs a periodically shaken two dimensional dissipative lattice and hinges on a simultaneous transport…
Centrifugation is a widespread laboratory technique used to separate mixtures into fractions characterized by a specific size, weight or density. We demonstrate that centrifugation can be also used to separate swimming cells having…
We present a generic mechanism by which reproducing microorganisms, with a diffusivity that depends on the local population density, can form stable patterns. It is known that a decrease of swimming speed with density can promote separation…
We study deformability-based sorting of same-size RBCs via DLD using an in-house integral equation solver. Our goal is to quantitatively characterize the physical mechanisms that enable the cell separation. To this end, we systematically…
The complex interactions underlying collective motion in biological systems give rise to emergent behaviours such as flocking, sorting, and cooperative transport. These dynamics often involve species with different motilities coordinating…
A quantitative understanding of organism-level behavior requires predictive models that can capture the richness of behavioral phenotypes, yet are simple enough to connect with underlying mechanistic processes. Here we investigate the…
We investigate the nonequilibrium dynamics of active matter using a two-dimensional active Brownian particles model. In these systems, self-propelled particles undergo motility-induced phase separation (MIPS), spontaneously segregating into…