Active Brownian Particles in Random and Porous Environments

Abstract

The transport of active particles may occur in complex environments, in which it emerges from the interplay between the mobility of the active components and the quenched disorder of the environment. Here we explore structural and dynamical properties of Active Brownian Particles (ABPs) in random environments composed of fixed obstacles in three dimensions. We consider different arrangements of the obstacles. In particular, we consider two particular situations corresponding to experimentally realizable settings. Firstly, we model pinning particles in (non--overlapping) random positions and secondly in a percolating gel structure, and provide an extensive characterization of the structure and dynamics of ABPs in these complex environments. We find that the confinement increases the heterogeneity of the dynamics, with new populations of absorbed and localized particles appearing close to the obstacles. This heterogeneity has a profound impact on the motility induced phase separation (MIPS) exhibited by the particles at high activity, ranging from nucleation and growth in random disorder to a complex phase separation in porous environments.

References in corpus (16)

• Theoretical perspective on the glass transition and amorphous materials
• Physics of Microswimmers - Single Particle Motion and Collective Behavior
• Colloidal Gels: Equilibrium and Non-Equilibrium Routes
• Turning bacteria suspensions into a "superfluid"
• Active matter
• Pressure and Phase Equilibria in Interacting Active Brownian Spheres
• Bacterial hopping and trapping in porous media
• Dynamics of a Brownian circle swimmer
• Distortion and destruction of colloidal flocks in disordered environments
• Identification of long-lived clusters and their link to slow dynamics in a model glass former
• Growing Dynamical Facilitation on Approaching the Random Pinning Colloidal Glass Transition
• Influence of the glass transition on the liquid-gas spinodal decomposition
• Deconstructing the glass transition through critical experiments on colloids
• Characterization of MIPS in a suspension of repulsive Active Brownian Particles through dynamical features
• The effect of attractions on the local structure of liquids and colloidal fluids
• Dynamics of bacteria scanning a porous environment