2025/03/19 by Yujie Jiang, Jiang, Yujie, Haiquan Li +7
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Materials and Mechanics #FOS: Physical sciences #Micro and Nano Robotics #Pickering emulsions and particle stabilization #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2503.15744
openalex publication_date 2025/03/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Active systems of self-rotating elements inherently exhibit chirality, making them of fundamental interest due to parity violation. Using large-scale hydrodynamic simulations, we investigate the gelation of adhesive spinners confined to quasi-2D monolayers at low Reynolds numbers. Unlike the coarsening dynamics of passive colloids, spinner gelation follows a different pathway, displaying structural chirality during the early stages of aggregation. However, this chirality dissipates upon dynamical arrest, resulting in a final gel structure that resembles a conventional colloidal gel. As a result, we find no sign of odd mechanical responses. Nonetheless, the elastic modulus and gelation time remain tunable through spinning activity, providing a new avenue for the bottom-up design of programmable soft materials.