Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 11: Active Matter 2 (joint session DY/BP/CPP)

BP 11.5: Talk

Tuesday, September 6, 2022, 11:00–11:15, H18

Memory-induced chirality in self-freezing active droplets — •Aritra K. Mukhopadhyay¹, Kai Feng², José Carlos Ureña Marcos¹, Ran Niu², Qiang Zhao², and Benno Liebchen¹ — ¹Technische Universität Darmstadt, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany. — ²Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 430074 Wuhan, China.

We experimentally realize and numerically model a new type of self-propelled droplet swimmer which exhibits chiral motion due to self-induced memory effects without requiring any explicit symmetry breaking caused by specific droplet geometries or complex environments. The droplets are composed of a binary polymer mixture that solidifies over time, simultaneously emitting certain polymers into their environment. A spontaneous asymmetry of the emitted polymer concentration along the stationary droplet surface induces Marangoni flows which cause the droplet to initially self-propel ballistically. However, the emitted polymers diffuse slowly and form long-lived trails with which the droplet can self-interact in the course of time and this leads to a dynamical transition from ballistic to chiral motion. The droplets persistently exhibit chiral motion with the same handedness until at even later times a second transition occurs when the droplets confine themselves leading to self-trapping over the timescale of our experiments and simulations. Our results exemplify a new route to realizing synthetic active particles whose dynamics can be controlled via the pronounced self-induced memory effects.