Related papers: Active particles in tunable compressible environme…
Circular swimmers with tunable orbit radius and chirality are gaining attention due to their potential to illustrate novel collective phases in simulations and synthetic and biological active matter. Here, we present a facile experimental…
Active adaptive matter has attracted considerable interest due to its rich, largely unexplained dynamics and its relevance to a wide range of synthetic and biological materials. An important subclass of such systems consists of active…
Platinum-coated polystyrene Janus particles exhibit a combination of stochastic and deterministic motion in hydrogen peroxide solutions, making them promising candidates for applications in micro-scale cargo transport, drug delivery, and…
A recently introduced active phase field crystal model describes the formation of ordered resting and traveling crystals in systems of self-propelled particles. Increasing the active drive, a resting crystal can be forced to perform…
Curvature plays a central role in the proper function of many biological processes. With active matter being a standard framework for understanding many aspects of the physics of life, it is natural to ask what effect curvature has on the…
We create controllable active particles in the form of metal-dielectric Janus colloids which acquire motility through a nematic liquid crystal film by transducing the energy of an imposed perpendicular AC electric field. We achieve complete…
An important challenge in active matter lies in harnessing useful global work from entities that produce work locally, e.g., via self-propulsion. We investigate here the active matter version of a classical capillary rise effect, by…
Chemically active colloids move by creating gradients in the composition of the surrounding solution and by exploiting the differences in their interactions with the various molecular species in solution. If such particles move near…
We investigate the collective motion of self-propelled agents in an environment filled with obstacles that are tethered to fixed positions via springs. The active particles are able to modify the environment by moving the obstacles through…
When tiny soft ferromagnetic particles are placed along a liquid interface and exposed to a vertical magnetic field, the balance between capillary attraction and magnetic repulsion leads to self-organization into well-defined patterns.…
Controlled assembly of active-passive colloidal mixtures offers a route to reconfigurable microscale machines, but their self-assembly pathways remain poorly understood. We study the directed assembly of metallo-dielectric Janus particles…
We investigate the transport diffusivity of artificial microswimmers, a.k.a. Janus particles, moving in a sinusoidal channel in the absence of external biases. Their diffusion constant turns out to be quite sensitive to the self-propulsion…
In this study, we conduct experimental investigations on the behavior of confined self-propelled particles within a circular arena, employing small commercial robots capable of locomotion, communication, and information processing. These…
Microorganisms are able to overcome the thermal randomness of their surroundings by harvesting energy to navigate in viscous fluid environments. In a similar manner, synthetic colloidal microswimmers are capable of mimicking complex…
Collections of simple, self-propelled colloidal particles exhibit complex, emergent dynamical behavior, with promising applications in microrobotics. When confined within a deformable vesicle, self-propelled rods cluster and align,…
In the presence of an obstacle, active particles condensate into a surface "wetting" layer due to persistent motion. If the obstacle is asymmetric, a rectification current arises in addition to wetting. Asymmetric geometries are therefore…
Active particles (living or synthetic) often move through inhomogeneous environments, such as gradients in light, heat or nutrient concentration, that can lead to directed motion (or taxis). Recent research has explored inhomogeneity in the…
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…
The defining feature of active particles is that they constantly propel themselves by locally converting chemical energy into directed motion. This active self-propulsion prevents them from equilibrating with their thermal environment…
We present a model system in which to study natural selection in the colloid world. In the assembly of active Janus particles into rotating pinwheels when mixed with trace amounts of homogeneous colloids in the presence of an AC electric…