Clustering and pattern formation in chemorepulsive active colloids

We demonstrate that migration away from self-produced chemicals (chemorepulsion) generates a generic route to clustering and pattern formation among self-propelled colloids. The clustering instability can be caused either by anisotropic chemical production, or by a delayed orientational response to...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Liebchen, Benno, Marenduzzo, Davide, Pagonabarraga Mora, Ignacio, Cates, Michael E.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2015
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/96383
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/96383
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Col·loides
Sistemes autoorganitzatius
Colloids
Self-organizing systems
Descripción
Sumario:We demonstrate that migration away from self-produced chemicals (chemorepulsion) generates a generic route to clustering and pattern formation among self-propelled colloids. The clustering instability can be caused either by anisotropic chemical production, or by a delayed orientational response to changes of the chemical environment. In each case, chemorepulsion creates clusters of a self-limiting area which grows linearly with self-propulsion speed. This agrees with recent observations of dynamic clusters in Janus colloids (albeit not yet known to be chemorepulsive). More generally, our results could inform design principles for the self-assembly of chemorepulsive synthetic swimmers and/or bacteria into nonequilibrium patterns.