Inverse Solidification Induced by Active Janus Particles

Abstract

Crystals melt when thermal excitations or the concentration of defects in the lattice is sufficiently high. Upon melting, the crystalline long-range order vanishes, turning the solid to a fluid. In contrast to this classical scenario of solid melting, here we demonstrate a counter-intuitive behavior of the occurrence of crystalline long-range order in an initially disordered matrix. This unusual solidification is demonstrated in a system of passive colloidal particles accommodating chemically active defects -- photocatalytic Janus particles. The observed crystallization occurs when the amount of active-defect-induced fluctuations (which is the measure of the effective temperature) reaches critical value. The driving mechanism behind this unusual behavior is purely internal and resembles a blast-induced solidification. Here the role of "internal micro-blasts" is played by the photochemical activity of defects residing in the colloidal matrix. The defect-induced solidification occurs under non-equilibrium conditions: the resulting solid exists as long as a constant supply of energy in the form of ion flow is provided by the catalytic photochemical reaction at the surface of active Janus particle defects. Our findings could be useful for understanding of the phase transitions of matter under extreme conditions far from thermodynamic equilibrium.

arXiv comment14 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Phase Diagram of Active Brownian Spheres: Crystallization and the Metastability of Motility-Induced Phase Separation
• Interactions in Active Colloids
• Light, Matter, Action: Shining light on active matter
• Escape kinetics of self-propelled particles from a circular cavity
• Interaction of Active Janus Particles with Passive Tracers
• Selecting active matter according to motility in an acoustofluidic setup: Self-propelled particles and sperm cells
• Electrokinetic Janus micromotors moving on topographically flat chemical patterns
• Motility-dependent selective transport of active matter in trap arrays: Separation methods based on trapping-detrapping and deterministic lateral displacement