In this Letter, we explore experimentally the phase behavior of a dense active suspension of self-propelled colloids. In addition to a solidlike and gaslike phase observed for high and low densities, a novel cluster phase is reported at intermediate densities. This takes the form of a stationary assembly of dense aggregates-resulting from a permanent dynamical merging and separation of active colloids-whose average size grows with activity as a linear function of the self-propelling velocity. While different possible scenarios can be considered to account for these observations-such as a generic velocity weakening instability recently put forward-we show that the experimental results are reproduced mathematically by a chemotactic aggregation mechanism, originally introduced to account for bacterial aggregation and accounting here for diffusiophoretic chemical interaction between colloidal swimmers.
Dynamic clustering in active colloidal suspensions with chemical signaling.
I. Theurkauff,C. Cottin-Bizonne,Jérémie Palacci,C. Ybert,L. Bocquet
Published 2012 in Physical Review Letters
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- Publication year
2012
- Venue
Physical Review Letters
- Publication date
2012-02-28
- Fields of study
Medicine, Physics, Chemistry
- Identifiers
- External record
- Source metadata
Semantic Scholar, PubMed
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