Active colloidal gel

One of the distinctive properties of living systems is to be self-driven. They thereby access emergent properties. Molecular motors, which stiffen and contract cytoskeletal networks, make a good example in nature. Here, we designed an artificial self-driven active gel which combines elastic architectures and activity by embedding active particles inside colloidal networks. By triggering the activity of a small fraction of active particles, the colloidal networks re-organize due to the internal driving. At the microscopic level, we look into the short time vibrational dynamics and long-time dynamical correlations and analyze how they depend on the local structure of the gel.