Recently, a team of scientists led by Prof Yongxiang Gao from the Institute for Advanced Study Shenzhen University and Prof Mingcheng Yang from Institute of Physics Chinese Academy of Sciences published in Research(Q1; IF 11) their work titled "Morphology tailed dynamic state transition in active passive collective assemblies". Dr Nan Yu is the first author and Prof Yongxiang Gao is the co-corresponding author, and Shenzhen University is the first affiliation.

Active materials composed of active and passive units are ubiquitous in nature, ranging from attachment of flagellum to rotary motor to assembly of protein motors with cytoskeletal filaments, which display striking transition between different dynamics states that are central to various biological functions. Assemblies of active and passive colloids are emerging synthetic analogue of biological active matter, which promise unique dynamics and functions that may find applications in micromachines and targeted drug delivery. Despite recent progresses, strategies to achieve controllable transition between different dynamic states remain rare. In this work, the research team reveals the importance of the morphology of active colloids and the size of passive colloids in tailoring the dynamic states via a combination of experiments and computer simulations, including translating and orbiting states, and novel dynamic transitions states with ‘8’-like motion and hopping between metastable circling states. Their work provides important principles of tuning the dynamic states of active and passive colloidal assemblies, which should be of broad interest for steering active systems and designing microrobotics, micro-machines, and cargo delivery systems.

This research was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2022A1515011800), the Science and Technology Innovation Commission of Shenzhen (JCYJ20220531103205012), the Key Project of Guangdong Provincial Department of Education (2023ZDZX3021).

https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/research.0304