Geometric tuning of self-propulsion for Janus catalytic particles

Abstract

Catalytic swimmers have attracted much attention as alternatives to biological systems for examining collective microscopic dynamics and the response to physico-chemical signals. Yet, understanding and predicting even the most fundamental characteristics of their individual propulsion still raises important challenges. While chemical asymmetry is widely recognized as the cornerstone of catalytic propulsion, different experimental studies have reported that particles with identical chemical properties may propel in opposite directions. Here, we show that, beyond its chemical properties, the detailed shape of a catalytic swimmer plays an essential role in determining its direction of motion, demonstrating the compatibility of the classical theoretical framework with experimental observations.

11 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Scientific Reports

References in corpus (8)

• The hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms
• Self-motile colloidal particles: from directed propulsion to random walk
• Designing phoretic micro- and nano-swimmers
• Turning bacteria suspensions into a "superfluid"
• Phoretic self-propulsion at finite Péclet numbers
• Asymmetric steady streaming as a mechanism for acoustic propulsion of rigid bodies
• Autophoretic locomotion from geometric asymmetry
• Pulling and Pushing a Cargo With a Catalytically Active Carrier

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Tuning the motility and directionality of self-propelled colloids
• Slender Phoretic Theory of chemically active filaments
• Diffusiophoretic propulsion of an isotropic active colloidal particle near a finite-sized disk embedded in a planar fluid-fluid interface
• Active dipolar spheroids in shear flow and transverse field: Population splitting, cross-stream migration and orientational pinning
• Self-organization of active colloids mediated by chemical interactions
• Chemomechanical motility modes of partially wetting liquid droplets
• Instability and self-propulsion of flexible autophoretic filaments