Tag: Jens Grauer

Press release on Active Droploids

The article Active Droploids has been featured in a press release of the University of Gothenburg.

The study, published in Nature Communications, examines a special system of colloidal particles and demonstrates a new kind of active matter, which interacts with and modifies its environment. In the long run, the result of the study can be used for drug delivery inside the human body or to perform sensing of environmental pollutants and their clean-up.

Here the links to the press releases:
English: Feedback creates a new class of active biomimetic materials.
Swedish: Feedback möjliggör en ny form av aktiva biomimetiska material.

The article has been features also in Mirage News, Science Daily, Phys.org, Innovations Report, Informationsdienst Wissenschaft (idw) online, Nanowerk.

Active droploids published in Nature Communications

Active droploids. (Image taken from the article.)
Active droploids
Jens Grauer, Falko Schmidt, Jesús Pineda, Benjamin Midtvedt, Hartmut Löwen, Giovanni Volpe & Benno Liebchen
Nat. Commun. 12, 6005 (2021)
doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-26319-3
arXiv: 2109.10677

Active matter comprises self-driven units, such as bacteria and synthetic microswimmers, that can spontaneously form complex patterns and assemble into functional microdevices. These processes are possible thanks to the out-of-equilibrium nature of active-matter systems, fueled by a one-way free-energy flow from the environment into the system. Here, we take the next step in the evolution of active matter by realizing a two-way coupling between active particles and their environment, where active particles act back on the environment giving rise to the formation of superstructures. In experiments and simulations we observe that, under light-illumination, colloidal particles and their near-critical environment create mutually-coupled co-evolving structures. These structures unify in the form of active superstructures featuring a droplet shape and a colloidal engine inducing self-propulsion. We call them active droploids—a portmanteau of droplet and colloids. Our results provide a pathway to create active superstructures through environmental feedback.