Chemotactic self-caging in active emulsions

Abstract

A common feature of biological self-organization is how active agents communicate with each other or their environment via chemical signaling. Such communications, mediated by self-generated chemical gradients, have consequences for both individual motility strategies and collective migration patterns. Here, in a purely physicochemical system, we use self-propelling droplets as a model for chemically active particles that modify their environment by leaving chemical footprints, which act as chemorepulsive signals to other droplets. We analyze this communication mechanism quantitatively both on the scale of individual agent-trail collisions as well as on the collective scale where droplets actively remodel their environment while adapting their dynamics to that evolving chemical landscape. We show in experiment and simulation how these interactions cause a transient dynamical arrest in active emulsions where swimmers are caged between each other's trails of secreted chemicals. Our findings provide new insight into the collective dynamics of chemically active particles and yield principles for predicting how negative autochemotaxis shapes their navigation strategy.

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• Self-solidifying active droplets showing memory-induced chirality
• Interfacial activity dynamics of confined active droplets
• Marangoni droplets of dextran in PEG solution and its motile change due to coil-globule transition of coexisting DNA
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• Hydrodynamic efficiency limit on a Marangoni surfer
• Acoustic signaling enables collective perception and control in active matter systems
• Rigid flocks, undulatory gaits, and chiral foldamers in a chemically active polymer
• Minimal mechanism for flocking in phoretically interacting active particles
• Arrested on heating: controlling the motility of active droplets by temperature
• Current fluctuations of a self-interacting diffusion on a ring
• Biolocomotion and premelting in ice
• A numerical framework for phoretic particles
• Flocking transition in phoretically interacting active particles with pinning disorder
• Learning general pair interactions between self-propelled particles
• Extension and dynamical phases in random walkers depositing and following chemical trails