Designing highly efficient lock-and-key interactions in anisotropic active particles

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that the shape of microscopic swimmers significantly enhances cluster formation, with specific shapes like semicircles promoting efficient self-organization at low densities, informing design of active materials and drug delivery systems.

Contribution

It introduces a tunable model of anisotropic microswimmers and reveals how shape influences clustering dynamics through a unified kinetic framework.

Findings

Cluster formation follows Michaelis-Menten kinetics.

Bent and semicircular shapes promote assembly at low densities.

Shape optimization enhances self-organization efficiency.

Abstract

Cluster formation of microscopic swimmers is key to the formation of biofilms and colonies, efficient motion and nutrient uptake, but, in the absence of other interactions, requires high swimmer concentrations to occur. Here we experimentally and numerically show that cluster formation can be dramatically enhanced by an anisotropic swimmer shape. We analyze a class of model microswimmers with a shape that can be continuously tuned from spherical to bent and straight rods. In all cases, clustering can be described by Michaelis-Menten kinetics governed by a single scaling parameter that depends on particle density and shape only. We rationalize these shape-dependent dynamics from the interplay between interlocking probability and cluster stability. The bent rod shape promotes assembly even at vanishingly low particle densities and we identify the most efficient shape to be a semicircle. Our work provides key insights into how shape can be used to rationally design out-of-equilibrium self-organization, key to creating active functional materials and designing targeted two-component drug delivery.