Light-controlled Assembly of Active Colloidal Molecules

Abstract

Thanks to a constant energy input, active matter can self-assemble into phases with complex architectures and functionalities such as living clusters that dynamically form, reshape and break-up, which are forbidden in equilibrium materials by the entropy maximization (or free energy minimization) principle. The challenge to control this active self-assembly has evoked widespread efforts typically hinging on engineering of the properties of individual motile constituents. Here, we provide a different route, where activity occurs as an emergent phenomenon only when individual building blocks bind together in a way that we control by laser light. Using experiments and simulations of two species of immotile microspheres, we exemplify this route by creating active molecules featuring a complex array of behaviors, becoming migrators, spinners and rotators. The possibility to control the dynamics of active self-assembly via light-controllable nonreciprocal interactions will inspire new approaches to understand living matter and to design active materials.

20 pages, 4 figures; New Version: corrected typos, added detailed sections about simulations, clarified phoretic interactions responsible for molecule formation

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Cited by in corpus (42)

• The 2019 Motile Active Matter Roadmap
• Scalar Active Mixtures: The Non-Reciprocal Cahn-Hilliard Model
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• Dynamical Crystallites of Active Chiral Particles
• Interactions in Active Colloids
• Light, Matter, Action: Shining light on active matter
• Dynamics of active particles with space-dependent swim velocity
• Activity-controlled clogging and unclogging of micro-channels
• Rapid-Prototyping a Brownian Particle in an Active Bath
• Active droploids
• Non-equilibrium phase separation in mixtures of catalytically active particles: size dispersity and screening effects
• Towards an analytical description of active microswimmers in clean and in surfactant-covered drops
• Designing, Synthesizing and Modeling Active Fluids
• Dynamics of Magnus Dominated Particle Clusters, Collisions, Pinning and Ratchets
• Optimisation of an active heat engine
• Hydrochemical interactions of phoretic particles: a regularized multipole framework
• Clustering-induced velocity-reversals of active colloids mixed with passive particles
• Efficiency of isothermal active matter engines: Strong driving beats weak driving
• Network effects lead to self-organization in metabolic cycles of self-repelling catalysts
• Autonomous navigation of shape-shifting microswimmers
• Active Colloidal Molecules in Activity Gradients
• Engineering active motion in quantum matter
• Interaction-motif-based classification of self-organizing metabolic cycles
• Characterizing Different Motility Induced Regimes in Active Matter with Machine Learning and Noise
• Optothermal pulling, trapping, and assembly of colloids using nanowire plasmons
• Impact of non-reciprocal interactions on colloidal self-assembly with tunable anisotropy
• Stability of interlocked self-propelled dumbbell clusters
• Statistics of carrier-cargo complexes
• Phase Transitions in single species Ising Models with Non-Reciprocal couplings
• Active Crowds
• Rigid flocks, undulatory gaits, and chiral foldamers in a chemically active polymer
• Self-organization of active colloids mediated by chemical interactions
• Sorting of binary active-passive mixtures in designed microchannels
• Non Gaussian information of heterogeneity in Soft Matter
• A minimal model with stochastically broken reciprocity
• Odd elasticity in disordered chiral active materials
• Nonreciprocal Blume-Capel Model with Antisymmetric Single-Ion Anisotropies
• Chiral Active Matter