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Reconfiguring active particles by electrostatic imbalance

Nature Materials volume 15, pages 1095–1099 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Active materials represent a new class of condensed matter in which motile elements may collectively form dynamic, global structures out of equilibrium1,2,3. Here, we present a general strategy to reconfigure active particles into various collective states by introducing imbalanced interactions. We demonstrate the concept with computer simulations of self-propelled colloidal spheres, and experimentally validate it in a two-dimensional (2D) system of metal–dielectric Janus colloids subjected to perpendicular a.c. electric fields. The mismatched, frequency-dependent dielectric responses of the two hemispheres of the colloids allow simultaneous control of particle motility and colloidal interactions. We realized swarms, chains, clusters and isotropic gases from the same precursor particle by changing the electric-field frequency. Large-scale polar waves, vortices and jammed domains are also observed, with the persistent time-dependent evolution of their collective structure evoking that of classical materials. This strategy of asymmetry-driven active self-organization should generalize rationally to other active 2D and three-dimensional (3D) materials.

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Figure 1: Examples of collective active states formed by spheres with imbalanced, off-centred charges.
Figure 2: Experimental realization of the predicted active states from the same Janus colloidal spheres.
Figure 3: Time evolution in the swarming state.
Figure 4: Dynamic state diagram from 2D simulations.

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Acknowledgements

The experiments were supported by the US Department of Energy, Division of Materials Science, under Award DE-FG02-07ER46471 through the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The simulations were supported by the National Science Foundation through Grant No. DMR-1310211 and Grant No. DMR-1121262 to the Materials Research Center at Northwestern University (M.H. and E.L.). We acknowledge support from the Quest high-performance computing facility at Northwestern University. We are indebted to N. Wu and M. Sano for illuminating discussions. S.G. acknowledges support by the Institute for Basic Science, project code IBS-R020-D1.

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Author notes

  1. Jing Yan and Ming Han: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA

    Jing Yan, Jie Zhang & Cong Xu

  2. Applied Physics Graduate Program, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA

    Ming Han

  3. Departments of Materials Science and Engineering, Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics, and Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA

    Erik Luijten

  4. IBS Center for Soft and Living Matter, UNIST, Ulsan 689-798, South Korea

    Steve Granick

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  1. Jing Yan
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Contributions

J.Y. and S.G. initiated this study. J.Y., J.Z. and C.X. performed the experiment and analysed the data. M.H. and E.L. designed the model and performed the simulation. All authors contributed to the writing of the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Erik Luijten or Steve Granick.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Yan, J., Han, M., Zhang, J. et al. Reconfiguring active particles by electrostatic imbalance. Nature Mater 15, 1095–1099 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4696

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