Density dependent speed-up of particle transport in channels

Abstract

Collective transport through channels shows surprising properties under one-dimensional confinement: particles in a single file exhibit sub-diffusive behavior, while liquid confinement causes distance-independent correlations between the particles. Such interactions in channels are well studied for passive Brownian motion, but driven transport remains largely unexplored. Here, we demonstrate gating of transport due to a speed-up effect for actively driven particle transport through microfluidic channels. We prove that particle velocity increases with particle density in the channel due to hydrodynamic interactions under electrophoretic and gravitational forces. Numerical models demonstrate that the observed speed-up of transport originates from a hydrodynamic piston-like effect. Our discovery is fundamentally important for understanding protein channels and transport through porous materials and for designing novel sensors and filters.

References in corpus (7)

• The hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms
• Directed collective motion of bacteria under channel confinement
• Screened hydrodynamic interaction in a narrow channel
• Hydrodynamic interaction in confined geometries
• Anisotropic diffusion of spherical particles in closely confining microchannels
• Non-decaying hydrodynamic interactions along narrow channels
• Local characterization of hindered Brownian motion by using digital video microscopy and 3D particle tracking

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Single-file transport in periodic potentials: The Brownian asymmetric exclusion process
• Hydrodynamic interactions hinder transport of flow-driven colloidal particles
• Kinetic temperature and pressure of an active Tonks gas
• Single-File Diffusion of Active Brownian Particles
• Nonequilibrium transport and phase transitions in driven diffusion of interacting particles
• Scaling laws for single-file diffusion of adhesive particles
• Curvature induces and enhances transport of spinning colloids through narrow channels
• Active control of transport through nanopores
• Hydrodynamic interactions can induce jamming in flow-driven systems