Transient chirality in the gelation of adhesive spinner monolayers

YJ Jiang and HQ Li and YT Liu and HR Li and Y Cui, COMMUNICATIONS PHYSICS, 8, 452 (2025).

DOI: 10.1038/s42005-025-02362-0

Active systems of self-rotating elements inherently exhibit chirality, making them of fundamental interest due to parity violation. Yet how rotational activity influences gelation and whether such chirality can persist into the arrested state remain unclear. Using large-scale hydrodynamic simulations, we investigate the gelation of adhesive spinners confined to quasi-2D monolayers at low Reynolds numbers. Unlike the coarsening dynamics of passive colloids, spinner gelation follows a different pathway, displaying structural chirality during the early stages of aggregation. However, this chirality dissipates upon dynamical arrest, resulting in a final gel structure that resembles a conventional colloidal gel. As a result, we find no sign of odd mechanical responses. Nonetheless, the elastic modulus and gelation time remain tunable through spinning activity, providing a potential avenue for the bottom- up design of programmable soft materials.

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