Colloidal suspensions of microscopic particles show complex and interesting collective behaviors. In particular, the collective dynamics of colloids is fundamental and ubiquitous for materials assembly, robotic motion, microfluidic control, and in several biological scenarios. The collective dynamics of confined colloids can be completely different from that of free colloids: for instance, confined colloids can self-organize into vortex structures, coherent motion, or different phase behaviors. On one hand, due to the complexity of colloidal suspensions, how to finely tune the collective dynamics of confined colloids remains elusive. On the other hand, since the microscale confinement is on the same length scale as the colloidal size, it is difficult to determine how the colloids interplay with each other and the geometrical constraints.
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Source: Phys.org