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.

arXiv comment11 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Scientific Reports

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Cited by in corpus (19)

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• Pairing, waltzing and scattering of chemotactic active colloids
• Tuning the motility and directionality of self-propelled colloids
• Self-propulsion near the onset of Marangoni instability of deformable active droplets
• Autophoretic motion in three dimensions
• Exact phoretic interaction of two chemically-active particles
• Axisymmetric Squirmers in Stokes Fluid with Nonuniform Viscosity
• Exact axisymmetric interaction of phoretically active Janus particles
• Electrophoresis of active Janus particles
• Microtransformers: controlled microscale navigation with flexible robots
• Spontaneous polarization and locomotion of an active particle with surface-mobile enzymes
• Slender Phoretic Theory of chemically active filaments
• Hydro-chemical interactions in dilute phoretic suspensions: from individual particle properties to collective organization
• 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
• Swimming of microorganisms in quasi-2D membranes
• Instability and self-propulsion of flexible autophoretic filaments