Activity-induced diffusion recovery in crowded colloidal suspensions

Abstract

We show that the forces generated by active enzyme molecules are strong enough to influence the dynamics of their surroundings under artificial crowded environments. We measured the behavior of polymer microparticles in a quasi-two-dimensional system under aqueous environment, at various area fraction values of particles. In the presence of enzymatic activity not only the diffusion of the suspended particles at shorter time scale regime enhanced, the system also showed a transition from sub-diffusive to diffusive dynamics at longer time scale limits. Similar observations were also recorded with enzyme functionalized microparticles. Brownian dynamics simulations have been performed to support the experimental observations.