Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 339, Issue 6122, Pages 936-940Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1230020
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers program of the NSF [DMR-0820341]
- U.S. Army Research Office [W911NF-10-1-0518]
- NASA [NNX08AK04G]
- NASA [99476, NNX08AK04G] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Spontaneous formation of colonies of bacteria or flocks of birds are examples of self-organization in active living matter. Here, we demonstrate a form of self-organization from nonequilibrium driving forces in a suspension of synthetic photoactivated colloidal particles. They lead to two-dimensional living crystals, which form, break, explode, and re-form elsewhere. The dynamic assembly results from a competition between self-propulsion of particles and an attractive interaction induced respectively by osmotic and phoretic effects and activated by light. We measured a transition from normal to giant-number fluctuations. Our experiments are quantitatively described by simple numerical simulations. We show that the existence of the living crystals is intrinsically related to the out-of-equilibrium collisions of the self-propelled particles.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available