Shaping active matter from crystalline solids to active turbulence

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how modulating activity in a wet phoretic medium can control phase transitions and emergent patterns, advancing the design of reconfigurable active materials.

Contribution

It reveals new phase transitions and collective behaviors in active matter through large-scale simulations, unifying experimental observations and guiding material design.

Findings

Controlled solid-liquid-gas phase transitions via activity modulation

Observation of laminar-turbulent transitions in active fluid phases

Unified understanding of phoretic collective dynamics

Abstract

Active matter drives its constituent agents to move autonomously by harnessing free energy, leading to diverse emergent states with relevance to both biological processes and inanimate functionalities. Achieving maximum reconfigurability of active materials with minimal control remains a desirable yet challenging goal. Here, we employ large-scale, agent-resolved simulations to demonstrate that modulating the activity of a wet phoretic medium alone can govern its solid-liquid-gas phase transitions and, subsequently, laminar-turbulent transitions in fluid phases, thereby shaping its emergent pattern. These two progressively emerging transitions, hitherto unreported, bring us closer to perceiving the parallels between active matter and traditional matter. Our work reproduces and reconciles seemingly conflicting experimental observations on chemically active systems, presenting a unified landscape of phoretic collective dynamics. These findings enhance the understanding of long-range, many-body interactions among phoretic agents, offer new insights into their non-equilibrium collective behaviors, and provide potential guidelines for designing reconfigurable materials.