Engineering of frustration in colloidal artificial ices realized on microfeatured grooved lattices

Abstract

Artificial spin ice systems, namely lattices of interacting single domain ferromagnetic islands, have been used to date as microscopic models of frustration induced by lattice topology, allowing for the direct visualization of spin arrangements and textures. However, the engineering of frustrated ice states in which individual spins can be manipulated in situ and the real-time observation of their collective dynamics remain both challenging tasks. Inspired by recent theoretical advances, here we realize a colloidal version of an artificial spin ice system using interacting polarizable particles confined to lattices of bistable gravitational traps. We show quantitatively that ice-selection rules emerge in this frustrated soft matter system by tuning the strength of the pair interactions between the microscopic units. Via independent control of particle positioning and dipolar coupling, we introduce monopole-like defects and strings and use loops with defined chirality as an elementary unit to store binary information.