Physics has been extremely successful in describing and predicting and understanding properties of all kinds of materials. However, biological and living materials pose challenges due to their complexity and dynamics. Therein, one frontier of research is so called active matter, which refers to self-propulsive objects that can interact with each other and with their environment leading to complex and important behaviors. Examples of active particles include biological ones, such as flocking birds, swarming microbes and schooling fish. In addition, synthetic objects that mimic the behavior of these biological active particles can be nowadays prepared using various physical and chemical techniques. While many of these systems are easy to observe – birds and the flocks with binoculars or with a naked eye, bacteria with a simple optical microscope, and so on, it is still very difficult to interact with these, often small and fast, active objects to study them beyond simple observation. Our understanding of the behavior of the active particles, both at single particle and collective levels, is still very limited, partly because of lack of ideal experimental tools to interact with them.
The understanding of material behavior arising from scientific research is historically known to be extremely useful for the humankind. Concrete examples of this can be seen everywhere around us: semiconductors in computers and mobile devices, advanced alloys in transportation systems, increasingly biodegradable plastics in consumer products and packaging, liquid crystals in TV panels, and so on. Active particles and materials studied in this project are among the new frontiers of materials research. The results of this project will give scientists new tools to study these complex systems, leading to improved understanding of the behavior of biologically relevant micro-organisms as well as synthetic active particles that are envisioned to be functional components in next-generation technologies.
The overall objective of this project was to develop new tools for interacting with active particles to study their behavior beyond what is possible currently. The new tools are based on utilization of magnetic fields and forces. As a conclusion, we have demonstrated in this action that such tools are indeed possible and we have experimentally applied them successfully to investigations of both living biological and synthetic active matter systems.
