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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ComplexSwimmers (Biocompatible and Interactive Artificial Micro- and Nanoswimmers and Their Applications)

Teaser

Microswimmers are biological and artificial microscopic objects capable of self-propulsion. They have been attracting a growing interest from the biological and physical communities alike for some very good reasons. From the fundamental side, their study can shed light on the...

Summary

Microswimmers are biological and artificial microscopic objects capable of self-propulsion. They have been attracting a growing interest from the biological and physical communities alike for some very good reasons. From the fundamental side, their study can shed light on the far-from-equilibrium physics underlying the adaptive and collective behavior of biological entities such as chemotactic bacteria and eukaryotic cells. From the more applied side, they provide tantalizing options to perform tasks not easily achievable with other available techniques, such as the targeted localization, pick-up and delivery of microscopic and nanoscopic cargoes in applications such as drug delivery, bioremediation and chemical sensing.
However, there are still several open challenges that need to be tackled in order to achieve the full scientific and technological potential of microswimmers in real-life settings. The main challenges are: (1) to identify a biocompatible propulstion mechanism and energy supply capable of lasting for the whole particle life-cycle; (2) to understand their behavior in complex and crowded environments; (3) to learn how to engineer emergent behaviors; and (4) to scale down their dimensions towards the nanoscale.
This project aims at tackling these challenges by developing biocompatible microswimmers capable of elaborate behaviors, by engineering their performance when interacting with other particles and with a complex environment, and by developing working nanoswimmers.
To achieve these goals, we have laid out a roadmap that will lead us to push the frontiers of the current understanding of active matter both at the mesoscopic and at the nanoscopic scale, and will permit us to develop some technologically disruptive techniques, namely, targeted delivery of cargoes within complex environments, which is of interest for drug delivery and bioremediation, and efficient sorting of chiral nanoparticles, which is of interest for biomedical and pharmaceutical applications.

Work performed

In the first 2.5 years of the project, we have developed some more complex microswimmers, we have studied their motion in crowded environments, and we have studied how autonomous agents react to some sensorial cues.

We have realised some new species of active microscopic systems. First, we have developed a microscopic critical engine using an optically trapped particle immersed in a critical mixture. We have also realised active colloidal molecules that self-assemble starting from passive building blocks whenever they are illuminated. We have finally worked on the development of self-phoretic microswimmers.

We have studied how microswimmers interact with a background of passive particles. We have done this by employing numerical simulations and experiments with bacteria and colloidal particles.

We have studied the emergence of complex phototactic behaviours in the presence of sensorial delays. We have done this using theory, numerical simulations and swarms of microrobots.

Finally, we have introduced new methods to calibrate optical traps (FORMA) and for digital video microscopy (DeepTrack), based on artificial intelligence and deep learning.

Final results

Until the end of the project, we expect to achieve significant further progress beyond the state of the art.
In particular, we are planning to obtain innovative results on deformable microswimmers, on the use of interacting microswimmers for cargo delivery, on the study of microswimmers in complex environments, and on the development of nanoswimmers.
We are also planning to extensively employ tools from artificial intelligence and deep learning in order to address some specific challenges.

Website & more info

More info: http://softmatterlab.org.