ArticleScientific reports2017
Tuning the motility and directionality of self-propelled colloids.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Reservoir computing from collective dynamics of active colloidal oscillators.Communications AI & computing · 2026Article
- Tunable colloidal swarmalators with hydrodynamic coupling.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Density Modulations in Active Colloidal Systems through Orthogonal Propulsion Control and Sensory Delays.ACS nano · 2025Article
- Environmental memory boosts group formation of clueless individuals.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Collective foraging of active particles trained by reinforcement learning.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Unidirectional rotation of micromotors on water powered by pH-controlled disassembly of chiral molecular crystals.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Role of cohesion in the flow of active particles through bottlenecks.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Thermotaxis of Janus particles.The European physical journal. E, Soft matter · 2021Article
- Transport coefficients in dense active Brownian particle systems: mode-coupling theory and simulation results.The European physical journal. E, Soft matter · 2021Article
- Active colloids under geometrical constraints in viscoelastic media.The European physical journal. E, Soft matter · 2021Article
- Effective interactions mediated between two permeable disks in an active fluid.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Photo-bioconvection: towards light control of flows in active suspensions.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2020Review
- Light-switchable propulsion of active particles with reversible interactions.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Formation of stable and responsive collective states in suspensions of active colloids.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Active particles sense micromechanical properties of glasses.Nature materials · 2019Article
- Diffusing wave paradox of phototactic particles in traveling light pulses.Nature communications · 2019Article
- Self-organization of active particles by quorum sensing rules.Nature communications · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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 biolocomotion by means of simple self-propulsion mechanisms. Although experimentally the speed of active particles can be controlled by e.g. self-generated chemical and thermal gradients, an in-situ change of swimming direction remains a challenge. In this work, we study self-propulsion of half-coated spherical colloids in critical binary mixtures and show that the coupling of local body forces, induced by laser illumination, and the wetting properties of the colloid, can be used to finely tune both the colloid's swimming speed and its directionality. We experimentally and numerically demonstrate that the direction of motion can be reversibly switched by means of the size and shape of the droplet(s) nucleated around the colloid, depending on the particle radius and the fluid's ambient temperature. Moreover, the aforementioned features enable the possibility to realize both negative and positive phototaxis in light intensity gradients. Our results can be extended to other types of half-coated microswimmers, provided that both of their hemispheres are selectively made active but with distinct physical properties.
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Registered trials
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