Tunable self-healing of magnetically propelling colloidal carpets

Helena Massana-Cid, Fanlong Meng, Daiki Matsunaga, Ramin Golestanian () and Pietro Tierno ()
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Helena Massana-Cid: Universitat de Barcelona
Fanlong Meng: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS)
Daiki Matsunaga: University of Oxford
Ramin Golestanian: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS)
Pietro Tierno: Universitat de Barcelona

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract The process of crystallization is difficult to observe for transported, out-of-equilibrium systems, as the continuous energy injection increases activity and competes with ordering. In emerging fields such as microfluidics and active matter, the formation of long-range order is often frustrated by the presence of hydrodynamics. Here we show that a population of colloidal rollers assembled by magnetic fields into large-scale propelling carpets can form perfect crystalline materials upon suitable balance between magnetism and hydrodynamics. We demonstrate a field-tunable annealing protocol based on a controlled colloidal flow above the carpet that enables complete crystallization after a few seconds of propulsion. The structural transition from a disordered to a crystalline carpet phase is captured via spatial and temporal correlation functions. Our findings unveil a novel pathway to magnetically anneal clusters of propelling particles, bridging driven systems with crystallization and freezing in material science.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10255-4

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