Motility-Induced Clustering of Active Particles under Soft Confinement.

We investigate the structural and dynamic properties of active Brownian particles (APs) confined within a soft annulus-shaped channel. Depending on the strength of the confinement and the Péclet number, we observe a novel reentrant behavior that is not present in unconfined systems. Our findings are substantiated by numerical simulations and analytical considerations, revealing that this behavior arises from the strong coupling between the Péclet number and the effective confining dimensionality of the APs. Our work highlights the peculiarities of soft boundaries for APs and how clogging can be avoided under such conditions.

Critical Casimir interactions of colloids in micellar critical solutions.

We study the temperature-dependence of critical Casimir interactions in a critical micellar solution of the nonionic surfactant C12E5 dissolved in water. Experimentally, this is achieved with total internal reflection microscopy (TIRM) which measures the interaction between a single particle and a flat wall. For comparison, we also studied the pair interactions of a two dimensional layer of colloidal particles in the identical micellar system which yields good agreement with the TIRM results. Although, at the surfactant concentration considered here, the fluid forms a dynamical network of wormlike micelles whose structure is considerably more complex than that of simple critical molecular fluids, the temperature-dependence of the measured interactions is - for surface-to-surface distances above 160 nm - in excellent quantitative agreement with theory. Below 160 nm, deviations arise which we attribute to the adsorption of micelles to the interacting surfaces.

Role of cohesion in the flow of active particles through bottlenecks.

We experimentally and numerically study the flow of programmable active particles (APs) with tunable cohesion strength through geometric constrictions. Similar to purely repulsive granular systems, we observe an exponential distribution of burst sizes and power-law-distributed clogging durations. Upon increasing cohesion between APs, we find a rather abrupt transition from an arch-dominated clogging regime to a cohesion-dominated regime where droplets form at the aperture of the bottleneck. In the arch-dominated regime the flow-rate only weakly depends on the cohesion strength. This suggests that cohesion must not necessarily decrease the group's efficiency passing through geometric constrictions or pores. Such behavior is explained by "slippery" particle bonds which avoids the formation of a rigid particle network and thus prevents clogging. Overall, our results confirm the general applicability of the statistical framework of intermittent flow through bottlenecks developed for granular materials also in case of active microswimmers whose behavior is more complex than that of Brownian particles but which mimic the behavior of living systems.