Science· 2013Q1
Living Crystals of Light-Activated Colloidal Surfers
- 1,782citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2013year
Short summary
Researchers created dynamic, 2D "living crystals" from synthetic, light-activated colloidal particles that spontaneously assemble, disassemble, and reform.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Synthetic colloidal particles were engineered to be photoactivated, enabling light-driven self-organization.
- Two-dimensional "living crystals" were formed, exhibiting dynamic behaviors like assembly and disassembly.
- The crystal dynamics result from a balance between light-induced self-propulsion and attractive osmotic/phoretic forces.
- A transition to giant-number fluctuations was observed and quantitatively matched by numerical simulations.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Spontaneous formation of colonies of bacteria or flocks of birds are examples of self-organization in active living matter. Here, we demonstrate a form of self-organization from nonequilibrium driving forces in a suspension of synthetic photoactivated colloidal particles. They lead to two-dimensional "living crystals," which form, break, explode, and re-form elsewhere. The dynamic assembly results from a competition between self-propulsion of particles and an attractive interaction induced respectively by osmotic and phoretic effects and activated by light. We measured a transition from normal to giant-number fluctuations. Our experiments are quantitatively described by simple numerical simulations. We show that the existence of the living crystals is intrinsically related to the out-of-equilibrium collisions of the self-propelled particles.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Science, 2013 · DOI ↗
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Field: Condensed Matter Physics
Condensed Matter PhysicsPhysics and Astronomy