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Cooperative collective dynamics is a principal determinant of the ability of synthetic micromotors to perform specific functions. However, realizing controllable and predictable collective behavior in complex physiological environments…
The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…
An artificial microswimmer drifts in response to spatio-temporal modulations of an activating suspension medium. We consider two competing mechanisms capable of influencing its tactic response: angular fluctuations, which help it explore…
Unicellular microscopic organisms living in aqueous environments outnumber all other creatures on Earth. A large proportion of them are able to self-propel in fluids with a vast diversity of swimming gaits and motility patterns. In this…
Living systems contain intricate biochemical networks whose structure is closely related to their function and allows them to exhibit robust behavior in the presence of external stimuli. Such networks typically involve catalytic enzymes,…
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.…
Chemotaxis and auto-chemotaxis play an important role in many essential biological processes. We present a self-propelling artificial swimmer system which exhibits chemotaxis as well as negative auto-chemotaxis. Oil droplets in an aqueous…
Differently from passive Brownian particles, active particles, also known as self-propelled Brownian particles or microswimmers and nanoswimmers, are capable of taking up energy from their environment and converting it into directed motion.…
Active colloids, also known as artificial microswimmers, are self-propelled micro and nanoparticles that convert uniform sources of fuel (e.g. chemical) or uniform external driving fields (e.g. magnetic or electric) into directed motion by…
Microelectronic morphogenesis is the creation and maintenance of complex functional structures by microelectronic information within shape-changing materials. Only recently has in-built information technology begun to be used to reshape…
Cells and microorganisms employ dynamic shape changes to enable steering and avoidance for efficient spatial exploration and collective organization. In contrast, active colloids, their synthetic counterparts, currently lack similar…
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…
Escherichia coli has long been used as a model organism due to the extensive experimental characterization of its pathways and molecular components. Take chemotaxis as an example, which allows bacteria to sense and swim in response to…
Self-propelled bacteria are marvels of nature with a potential to power dynamic materials and microsystems of the future. The challenge is in commanding their chaotic behavior. By dispersing swimming Bacillus subtilis in a…
Active particles such as swimming bacteria or self-propelled colloids are known to spontaneously organize into fascinating large-scale dynamic structures. The emergence of these collective states from the motility pattern of the individual…
The diffusion of active microscopic organisms in complex environments plays an important role in a wide range of biological phenomena from cell colony growth to single organism transport. Here, we investigate theoretically and…
Active fluids made of powered suspended particles have unique abilities to self-generate flow and density structures. How such dynamics can be triggered and leveraged by external cues is a key question of both biological and applied…
Biological tissues have been observed to display emergent fluid-like properties, owing to physical interactions between cells. However, it remains unclear in general how these fluid-like properties affect tissue structure and function.…
Active nematics are out-of-equilibrium systems in which energy injection at the microscale drives emergent collective behaviors, from spontaneous flows to active turbulence. While the dynamics of these systems have been extensively studied,…
Microorganisms can preferentially orient and move along gradients of a chemo-attractant (i.e., chemotax) while colonies of many microorganisms can collectively undergo complex dynamics in response to chemo-attractants that they themselves…