Living Liquid Crystals
arXiv:1312.5359 · doi:10.1073/pnas.1321926111
Abstract
Collective motion of self-propelled organisms or synthetic particles often termed active fluid has attracted enormous attention in broad scientific community because of it fundamentally non-equilibrium nature. Energy input and interactions among the moving units and the medium lead to complex dynamics. Here we introduce a new class of active matter, living liquid crystals (LLCs) that combine living swimming bacteria with a lyotropic liquid crystal. The physical properties of LLCs can be controlled by the amount of oxygen available to bacteria, by concentration of ingredients, or by temperature. Our studies reveal a wealth of new intriguing dynamic phenomena, caused by the coupling between the activity-triggered flow and long-range orientational order of the medium. Among these are (a) non-linear trajectories of bacterial motion guided by non-uniform director, (b) local melting of the liquid crystal caused by the bacteria-produced shear flows, (c) activity-triggered transition from a non-flowing uniform state into a flowing one-dimensional periodic pattern and its evolution into a turbulent array of topological defects, (d) birefringence-enabled visualization of microflow generated by the nanometers-thick bacterial flagella. Unlike their isotropic counterpart, the LLCs show collective dynamic effects at very low volume fraction of bacteria, on the order of 0.2%. Our work suggests an unorthodox design concept to control and manipulate the dynamic behavior of soft active matter and opens the door for potential biosensing and biomedical applications.
32 pages, 8 figures, Supporting Information included
References in corpus (9)
- Novel type of phase transition in a system of self-driven particles
- Spontaneous motion in hierarchically assembled active matter
- Physics of Microswimmers - Single Particle Motion and Collective Behavior
- Meso-scale turbulence in living fluids
- Fluid dynamics and noise in bacterial cell-cell and cell-surface scattering
- Fluid dynamics of bacterial turbulence
- Defect annihilation and proliferation in active nematics
- Velocity Correlations in an Active Nematic
- Morphogenesis of defects and tactoids during isotropic-nematic phase transition in self-assembled lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals
Cited by in corpus (131)
- Topology and Dynamics of Active Nematic Vesicles
- Bacterial hydrodynamics
- The 2019 Motile Active Matter Roadmap
- Topological active matter
- Orientational order of motile defects in active nematics
- Transition from turbulent to coherent flows in confined three-dimensional active fluids
- Command of active matter by topological defects and patterns
- Defect dynamics in active nematics
- From Phase to Micro-Phase Separation in Flocking Models: The Essential Role of Non-Equilibrium Fluctuations
- Topological structure and dynamics of three dimensional active nematics
- Patterning active materials with addressable soft interfaces
- Self-organized dynamics and the transition to turbulence of confined active nematics
- Transport powered by bacterial turbulence
- Stabilization of active matter by flow-vortex lattices and defect ordering
- Tunable structure and dynamics of active liquid crystals
- Onset of meso-scale turbulence in living fluids
- Data-driven quantitative modeling of bacterial active nematics
- Multiscale polar theory of microtubule and motor-protein assemblies
- Structuring Stress for Active Materials Control
- Vorticity, Defects and Correlations in Active Turbulence
- Active colloids in complex fluids
- Defect unbinding in active nematics
- Unusual swelling of a polymer in a bacterial bath
- Active colloids in liquid crystals
- Dynamics of active liquid interfaces
- Large-scale chaos and fluctuations in active nematics
- Correlation lengths in hydrodynamic models of active nematics
- Shape and Displacement Fluctuations in Soft Vesicles Filled by Active Particles
- Lattice Boltzmann Methods and Active Fluids
- Statistical Properties of Autonomous Flows in 2D Active Nematics
- Polar jets of swimming bacteria condensed by a patterned liquid crystal
- A theory for the dynamics of dense systems of athermal self-propelled particles
- Derivation of a hydrodynamic theory for mesoscale dynamics in microswimmer suspensions
- Flowing crystal of self-propelled particles
- Rotation and propulsion in 3d active chiral droplets
- Active nematic materials with substrate friction
- Phase transition to large scale coherent structures in 2d active matter turbulence
- Confinement controlled bend instability of three-dimensional active fluids
- Hydrodynamics of Active Defects: from order to chaos to defect ordering
- Contractile and chiral activities co-determine the helicity of swimming droplet trajectories
- Directional self-locomotion of active droplets enabled by nematic environment
- Swimming in Complex Fluids
- Geometrical control of active turbulence in curved topographies
- Anomalous diffusion and Lévy walks distinguish active from inertial turbulence
- Design of nematic liquid crystals to control microscale dynamics
- Negative stiffness and modulated states in active nematics
- Clustering of Magnetic Swimmers in a Poiseuille Flow
- Tunable corrugated patterns in an active gel sheet
- Extensile to contractile transition in active microtubule-actin composites generates layered asters with programmable lifetimes
- Hydrodynamics defines the stable swimming direction of spherical squirmers in a nematic liquid crystal
- The geometry of thresholdless active flow in nematic microfluidics
- Understanding dense active nematics from microscopic models
- Optimal transport and control of active drops
- The low noise phase of a 2d active nematic
- Wrinkling instability in 3D active nematics
- Active cholesterics: odder than odd elasticity
- Data-driven discovery of active nematic hydrodynamics
- Self-Sustained Density Oscillations of Swimming Bacteria Confined in Microchambers
- Multi-Particle Collision Dynamics Algorithm for Nematic Fluids
- Ordering in granular rod monolayers driven far from thermodynamic equilibrium
- Multiscale Microtubule Dynamics in Active Nematics
- Design rules for controlling active topological defects
- Mode-coupling theory for the steady-state dynamics of active Brownian particles
- Shear-induced polydomain structures of nematic lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal disodium cromoglycate
- Viscoelastic and elastomeric active matter: Linear instability and nonlinear dynamics
- Rectified Rotational Dynamics of Mobile Inclusions in Two-Dimensional Active Nematics
- Motion of two micro-wedges in a turbulent bacterial bath
- Hydrodynamic interactions between nearby slender filaments
- Ionic content dependence of viscoelasticity of lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal sunset yellow
- Condensate formation and multiscale dynamics in two-dimensional active suspensions
- Lamellar ordering, droplet formation and phase inversion in exotic active emulsions
- Locomotion and transport in a hexatic liquid crystal
- Defect Spirograph: Dynamical Behavior of Defects in Spatially Patterned Active Nematics
- Systematic extension of the Cahn-Hilliard model for motility-induced phase separation
- Designing, Synthesizing and Modeling Active Fluids
- Modeling chemo-hydrodynamic interactions of phoretic particles: a unified framework
- Lack of an equation of state for the nonequilibrium chemical potential of gases of active particles in contact
- Magnetic microswimmers exhibit Bose-Einstein-like condensation
- Following fluctuating signs: anomalous active superdiffusion of swimmers in anisotropic media
- Minimal model for transient swimming in a liquid crystal
- Active liquid crystals powered by force-sensing DNA-motor clusters
- Giant vortex dynamics in confined active turbulence
- Long-time anomalous swimmer diffusion in smectic liquid crystals
- Time dependent lyotropic chromonic textures in PDMS-based microfluidic confinements
- Nonstationary models for liquid crystals: A fresh mathematical perspective
- Flow properties and hydrodynamic interactions of rigid spherical microswimmers
- Liquid-crystal enabled electrophoresis: Scenarios for driving and reconfigurable assembling of colloids
- Dressed Active Particles in Spherical Crystals
- Dynamical Sub-classes of Dry Active Nematics
- Defect Loops in Three-Dimensional Active Nematics as Active Multipoles
- Mechanisms of carrier transport induced by a microswimmer bath
- A nematic liquid crystal with an immersed body: equilibrium, stress, and paradox
- Chirotactic response of microswimmers in fluids with odd viscosity
- Vortex Lattices in Active Nematics with Periodic Obstacle Arrays
- Inertial self-propelled particles in anisotropic environments
- Catapulting of topological defects through elasticity bands in active nematics
- Motile bacteria in a critical fluid mixture
- Polar swimmers induce several phases in active nematics
- Diffusion of active particles with angular velocity reversal
- Activity induced isotropic-polar transition in active liquid crystals
- Chiral run-and-tumble walker: transport and optimizing search
- Emergence of chaos in a viscous solution of rods
- Active uniaxially ordered suspensions on disordered substrates
- Exact and approximate solutions for elastic interactions in a nematic liquid crystal
- Enhancement of microorganism swimming speed in active matter
- Symbiotic Dynamics in Living Liquid Crystals
- Boundaries control active channel flows
- Curvature-driven stability of defects in nematic textures over spherical disks
- Active Nematic Multipoles: Flow Responses and the Dynamics of Defects and Colloids
- Stochastic kinetics reveal imperative role of anisotropic interfacial tension to determine morphology and evolution of nucleated droplets in nematogenic films
- Self-propulsion of an active polar drop
- Nonequilibrium grand-canonical ensemble built from a physical particle reservoir
- Modeling and Computation of Liquid Crystals
- Hermitian and non-Hermitian topology in active matter
- Spontaneous rotation and propulsion of suspended capsules in active nematics
- Active nematic pumps
- Lattice Boltzmann simulations of self-propelling chiral active droplets
- Microswimmers knead nematics into cholesterics
- Active assembly and non-reciprocal dynamics of elastic membranes
- Turbulence to order transitions in activity patterned active nematics
- Nematic liquid crystal flow driven by time-varying active surface anchoring
- Directional Swimming of B. Subtilis Bacteria Near a Switchable Polar Surface
- Aspect-ratio-dependent void formation in active rhomboidal and elliptical particle systems
- Motility and self propulsion of active droplets
- Single-shot quantitative polarization imaging of complex birefringent structure dynamics
- Simulations of Three-dimensional Nematic Guidance of Microswimmers
- Brownian motion: from kinetics to hydrodynamics
- Flagella bending affects macroscopic properties of bacterial suspensions
- Superdiffusion and antidiffusion in an aligned active suspension
- Dynamics of a simple model microswimmer in an anisotropic fluid: implications for alignment behavior and active transport in a nematic liquid crystal
- Microswimming in viscoelastic fluids