Related papers: Spatial dynamics of flexible nano-swimmers under a…
Swimming micro-organisms such as flagellated bacteria and sperm cells have fascinating locomotion capabilities. Inspired by their natural motion, there is an ongoing effort to develop artificial robotic nano-swimmers for potential in-body…
When swimming at low Reynolds numbers, inertial effects are negligible and reciprocal movements cannot induce net motion. Instead, symmetry breaking is necessary to achieve net propulsion. Directed swimming can be supported by magnetic…
Micro-swimmers put into motion by a rotating magnetic field have provided interesting challenges both in engineering and in mathematical modelling. We study here the dynamics of a permanent-magnetic rigid body submitted to a…
Electromagnetically propelled helical nanoswimmers offer great potential for nanorobotic applications. Here, the effect of confinement on their propulsion is characterized using lattice-Boltzmann simulations. Two principal mechanisms give…
A recent promising technique for robotic micro-swimmers is to endow them with a magnetization and apply an external magnetic field to provoke their deformation. In this note we consider a simple planar micro-swimmer model made of two…
Miniaturized magnetic soft robots have shown extraordinary capabilities of contactless manipulation, complex path maneuvering, precise localization, and quick actuation, which have equipped them to cater to challenging biomedical…
The collective swimming of soft robots in an infinite viscous fluid is an emergent phenomenon due to the non-reciprocal hydrodynamic interactions between individual swimmers. These physical interactions give rise to unique spatiotemporal…
Magnetically driven artificial microswimmers have the potential to revolutionize many biomedical technologies, such as minimally-invasive microsurgery, micro-particle manipulation, and localized drug delivery. However, many of these…
In this manuscript we describe the realization of a minimal hybrid microswimmer, composed of a ferromagnetic nanorod and a paramagnetic microsphere. The unbounded pair is propelled in water upon application of a swinging magnetic field that…
Synthetic microswimmers mimicking biological movements at the microscale have been developed in recent years. Actuating helical magnetic materials with a homogeneous rotating magnetic field is one of the most widespread techniques for…
Microscopic artificial swimmers have recently become highly attractive due to their promising potential for biomedical applications. The pioneering work of Dreyfus et al (2005) has demonstrated the motion of a microswimmer with an…
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,…
We investigate the hydrodynamic stability and transport of magnetic microswimmers in an external field using a kinetic theory framework. Combining linear stability analysis and nonlinear 3D continuum simulations, we show that for…
In analogy to nanoscopic molecules that are composed of individual atoms, we consider an active "microswimmer molecule". It is built up from three individual magnetic colloidal microswimmers that are connected by harmonic springs and…
Herein, self-healing small-scale swimmers capable of autonomous propulsion and on-the-fly structural recovery are described. The new strategy instantaneously restores the functionality of the swimmer after it has suffered severe damage.…
Artificial micro-swimmers actuated by external magnetic fields hold significant promise for targeted biomedical applications, including drug delivery and micro-robot-assisted therapy. However, their dynamics remain challenging to control…
We present a detailed numerical study of a microscopic artificial swimmer realized recently by Dreyfus et al. in experiments [R. Dreyfus et al., Nature 437, 862 (2005)]. It consists of an elastic filament composed of superparamagnetic…
- In this paper, we focus on a variant of a 3-link magnetic microswimmer which consists of three rigid magnetized segments connected by two torsional springs. In particular, we assume that one of the springs is twisted so that the swimmer…
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…
We experimentally and theoretically study the dynamics of a low-Reynolds number helical swimmer moving across viscosity gradients. Experimentally, a double-layer viscosity is generated by superposing two miscible fluids with similar…