Dynamically asymmetric and bicontinuous morphologies in active emulsions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the complex morphologies of active emulsions composed of polar active gels in passive fluids using numerical simulations, revealing diverse structures depending on activity type and composition.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical framework to study active-passive fluid mixtures, uncovering new asymmetric and bicontinuous morphologies influenced by activity type and system dimensionality.

Findings

Elongated structures form in contractile active gels with low active component abundance.

Passive droplets in an active matrix emerge at symmetric compositions.

Interconnected tube-like structures appear in three-dimensional extensile asymmetric mixtures.

Abstract

The morphology of a mixture made of a polar active gel immersed in an isotropic passive fluid is studied numerically. Lattice Boltzmann method is adopted to solve the Navier-Stokes equation and coupled to a finite-difference scheme used to integrate the dynamic equations of the concentration and of the polarization of the active component. By varying the relative amounts of the mixture phases, different structures can be observed. In the contractile case, at moderate values of activity, elongated structures are formed when the active component is less abundant, while a dynamic emulsion of passive droplets in an active matrix is obtained for symmetric composition. When the active component is extensile, aster-like rotating droplets and a phase-separated pattern appear for asymmetric and symmetric mixtures, respectively. The relevance of space dimensions in the overall morphology is shown by studying the system in three dimensions in the case of extensile asymmetric mixtures where interconnected tube-like structures span the whole system.