Artificial Rheotaxis

Self-propelled micro-particles are intrinsically out-of-equilibrium. This renders their physics far richer than that of passive colloids while relaxing some thermodynamical constraints and give rise to the emergence of complex phenomena e.g. collective behavior, swarming\textellipsis I will show that we can design microparticles with features usually observed for living microorganisms, the sensing of their environment or rheotaxis, the migration in a shear flow. We quantitatively describe the phenomenon and show that we can use a flow to control and assemble the particles. These self propelled particles realize a step forward in the design of advanced biomimetic systems.