Active matter, consisting of self-acting units that create energy through exploration or internal stimulation, holds promise for extracting useful functions. Active colloids or droplets in anisotropic liquids, such as liquid crystal, can be classified into externally driven and internally driven categories. The proposed project focuses on the internally driven category, which includes flagellated bacteria, which exhibit chaotic dynamics in a proper solvent. This research could have applications in targeted drug delivery, block disruption, or blood clot disruption. The project aims to explore the role of anisotropy in determining swimming dynamics and flow signatures of individual bacteria and bacteria-liquid droplets. It will disperse bacteria-glycerol droplets in TLC, examining the interaction between droplets and TB emulsions. An external field will be applied to the aqueous dispersion of droplets in TLC. The study will also explore the interaction between active and passive colloids, dispersing hexagonal sheets and silica microspheres as passive colloids. The project will also study the motion of bacteria in torons, cholesteric fingers, and cholesteric droplets, examining their sizes and concentrations. The final objective is to investigate the micrsowimming of bacteria-LCLC droplets in ionic surfactants, observing whether curly motion or self-propulsion improves with the addition of bacteria into LC droplets.
University of Calicut
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