2024/07/05 by Caterina Landi, Landi, Caterina, John Russo +5
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Micro and Nano Robotics #Modular Robots and Swarm Intelligence #Pickering emulsions and particle stabilization #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2407.04572
openalex publication_date 2024/07/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In the present work, with the intent of exploring the out-of-equilibrium polymerization of active patchy particles in linear chains, we study a suspension of active bivalent Brownian particles (ABBPs). At all studied temperatures and densities, ABBPs self-assemble in aggregating chains, as opposed to the uniformly space-distributed chains observed in the corresponding passive systems. The main effect of activity, other than inducing chain aggregation, is to reduce the chain length and favor alignment of the propulsion vectors in the bonding process. At low activities, attraction dominates over activity in the bonding process, leading self-assembly to occur randomly regardless of the particle orientations.Interestingly, we find that at the lowest temperature, as density increases, chains aggregate forming a novel state: MISP, i.e., Motility-Induced Spirals, where spirals are characterised by a finite angular velocity. On the contrary, at the highest temperature, density and activity, chains aggregate forming a different novel state (a spinning crystalline cluster) characterized by a compact and hexagonal ordered structure, both translating and rotating. The rotation arises from an effective torque generated by the presence of competing domains where particles self-propel in the same direction.