Biological cells self-organize into living materials that uniquely blend structure with functionality and responsiveness to the environment. The integration of similar life-like features in man-made materials remains challenging, yet desirable to manufacture active, adaptive and autonomous systems. Here we show the self-organization of programmable random lasers from the reversible out-of-equilibrium self-assembly of colloids. Random lasing originates from the optical amplification of light undergoing multiple scattering within the dissipative colloidal assemblies and therefore is crucially dependent on their self-organization behavior. Under external light stimuli, these dynamic random lasers are responsive and present a continuously tunable laser threshold. They can thus reconfigure and cooperate by emulating the ever-evolving spatiotemporal relationship between structure and functionality typical of living matter.
Disordered dielectrics with structural correlations on length scales comparable to visible light wavelengths exhibit complex optical properties. Such materials exist in nature, leading to beautiful structural non-iridescent color, and they are also increasingly used as building blocks for optical materials and coatings. In this article, we study the single-scattering properties of micron-sized, disordered colloidal assemblies. The aggregates act as structurally colored supraparticles or as building blocks for macroscopic photonic glasses. We present experimental data for the differential scatt…
Melanin is a ubiquitous natural pigment that exhibits broadband absorption and high refractive index. Despite its widespread use in structural color production, how the absorbing material, melanin, affects the generated color is unknown. Using a combined molecular dynamics and finite-difference time-domain computational approach, this paper investigates structural color generation in one-component melanin nanoparticle-based supra-assemblies (called supraballs) as well as binary mixtures of melanin and silica (non-absorbing) nanoparticle-based supraballs. Experimentally produced one-component m…
Colloidal molecules are designed to mimic their molecular analogues through their anisotropic shape and interactions. However, current experimental realizations are missing the structural flexibility present in real molecules thereby restricting their use as model systems. We overcome this limitation by assembling reconfigurable colloidal molecules from silica particles functionalized with mobile DNA linkers in high yields. We achieve this by steering the self-assembly pathway towards the formation of finite-sized clusters by employing high number ratios of particles functionalized with comple…
Application of Machine Learning for the Identification of 2D Colloidal Assemblies: A Case Study on Particles of Distinct Shapes
Astrakhan Tatishchev State University（阿斯特拉罕塔季谢夫国立大学）；Caspian Institute of Maritime and River Transport named after Admiral General F.M. Apraksin – the affiliation of “Volga State University of Water Transport”（以海军上将F.M.阿普拉克辛命名的里海海事和河运学院——伏尔加水运大学下属机构）
A fresh approach to the data from experiments with hard sphere colloids yields seminal insights into the glass transition. The precise determination of the fraction of particles caged by their neighbours is unprecedented and provides cornerstone of our study. We show that the so-called "dramatic slowing" that accompanies super-packing is due to correlated cage fluctuations, rather than caging per se. Their statistics establish that the amorphous assemblies of caged particles are in states of self-organised criticality. The implied connection between the onset of caging and the thermodynamic 1s…
The design of complex materials and the formation of specific patterns often arise from the properties of the individual building blocks. In this respect, colloidal systems offer a unique opportunity because nowadays they can be synthesized in the laboratory with many different shapes and features. Hence, an appropriate choice of the particle characteristics makes it possible to generate macroscopic structures with desired properties. The versatility of colloids can also be explored in two dimensions, using liquid-liquid or air-liquid interfaces as privileged substrates where they can adsorb a…
Micron-size self-propelling particles are often proposed as synthetic models for biological microswimmers, yet they lack internally regulated adaptation, which is central to the autonomy of their biological counterparts. Conversely, adaptation and autonomy can be encoded in larger-scale soft-robotic devices, but transferring these capabilities to the colloidal scale remains elusive. Here, we create a new class of responsive microswimmers, powered by induced-charge electrophoresis, which can adapt their motility to external stimuli via an internal feedback. Using sequential capillary assembly, …
Bright, saturated structural colors in birds have inspired synthesis of self-assembled, disordered arrays of assembled nanoparticles with varied particle spacings and refractive indices. However, predicting colors of assembled nanoparticles, and thereby guiding their synthesis, remains challenging due to the effects of multiple scattering and strong absorption. Here, we use a computational approach to first reconstruct the nanoparticles' assembled structures from small-angle scattering measurements and then input the reconstructed structures to a finite-difference time-domain method to predict…
Optothermal interaction of active colloidal matter can facilitate environmental cues which can influence the dynamics of active soft matter systems. The optically induced thermal effect can be harnessed to study non-equilibrium thermodynamics as well as applied to self-propel colloids and form assemblies. In this work, we employ a defocused laser trap to form self-evolving colloidal active matter. The optothermal interaction of the active colloids in both focused and defocused optical trap has been investigated to ascertain their thermophoretic behavior, which shows a long-range attraction and…
Can active forces be exploited to drive the consistent collapse of an active polymer into a folded structure? In this paper we introduce and perform numerical simulations of a simple model of active colloidal folders, and show that a judicious inclusion of active forces into a stiff colloidal chain can generate designable and reconfigurable two dimensional folded structures. The key feature is to organize the forces perpendicular to the chain backbone according to specific patterns (sequences). We characterize the physical properties of this model and perform, using a number of numerical techn…
Physically intelligent micro-robotic systems exploit information embedded in micro-robots, their colloidal cargo, and their milieu to interact, assemble and form functional structures. Nonlinear anisotropic fluids like nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) provide untapped opportunities to embed interactions via their topological defects, complex elastic responses, and their ability to dramatically restructure in dynamic settings. Here we design and fabricate a 4-armed ferromagnetic micro-robot to embed and dynamically reconfigure information in the nematic director field, generating a suite of physi…
Swarmodroid & AMPy: Reconfigurable Bristle-Bots and Software Package for Robotic Active Matter Studies
School of Physics and Engineering, ITMO University（物理与工程学院，ITMO大学）；Department of Computer-Aided Design, Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University "LETI"（计算机辅助设计部门，圣彼得堡电力大学"LETI"）
