Research Projects

Artificial active swimmers have gained significant interest in recent years due to their ability to break the symmetry of their interactions with their surroundings, generating a local force for propulsion. Active-Droplets are isotropic droplets dispersed in surfactant-filled immiscible fluids, which generate a gradient of surface tension along their surface, causing an interfacial Marangoni flow. The inhomogeneity in surfactant concentration along the droplet is created through chemical reactions or micellar solubilization. Active emulsions are preferred as model systems for mimicking deformable biological active matter and have potential applications in drug delivery and bio-sensing systems in confined microscopic domains. Research on active motion of oil droplets has primarily focused on aqueous Newtonian fluids, but the dynamics of active deformable active particles are more relevant in environments resembling biological systems like blood, saliva, and cervical mucus. These systems have viscoelastic properties that deviate from Newtonian behavior, and the reciprocal coupling of swimmer dynamics with the rheological and structural properties of complex fluids may open unexplored distinct phenomenology. The study proposes to investigate the effect of the complex nature of the viscoelastic fluid on the locomotion of active droplets. Currently, typical emulsions used in food products, personal care products, and medicines are passive emulsions in non-Newtonian media, but the bulk mechanical behavior of active emulsions has limited understanding.