Active particles in geometrically confined viscoelastic fluids

Abstract

We experimentally study the dynamics of active particles (APs) in a viscoelastic fluid under various geometrical constraints such as flat walls, spherical obstacles and cylindrical cavities. We observe that the main effect of the confined viscoelastic fluid is to induce an effective repulsion on the APs when moving close to a rigid surface, which depends on the incident angle, the surface curvature and the particle activity. Additionally, the geometrical confinement imposes an asymmetry to their movement, which leads to strong hydrodynamic torques, thus resulting in detention times on the wall surface orders of magnitude shorter than suggested by thermal diffusion. We show that such viscoelasticity-mediated interactions have striking consequences on the behavior of multi-AP systems strongly confined in a circular pore. In particular, these systems exhibit a transition from liquid-like behavior to a highly ordered state upon increasing their activity. A further increase in activity melts the order, thus leading to a re-entrant liquid-like behavior.

arXiv comment12 figures, New Journal of Physics (accepted August 2019)

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• Swimming in Complex Fluids
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• Characterization of MIPS in a suspension of repulsive Active Brownian Particles through dynamical features
• Translational and rotational dynamics of a self-propelled Janus probe in crowded environments
• Wall curvature driven dynamics of a microswimmer
• Mode-Coupling Theory for Tagged-Particle Motion of Active Brownian Particles
• Active particles with fractional rotational Brownian motion
• Transient coarsening and the motility of optically heated Janus colloids in a binary liquid mixture
• Work extraction and performance of colloidal heat engines in viscoelastic baths
• Enhanced directionality of active processes in a viscoelastic bath
• Role of viscoelasticity on the dynamics and aggregation of chemically active sphere-dimers
• Escape dynamics of a self-propelled nanorod from circular confinements with narrow openings
• Influence of PEG on the Clustering of Active Janus Colloids
• Mpemba effect in the relaxation of an active Brownian particle in a trap without metastable states
• Rotating spherical particle in a continuous viscoelastic medium -- a microrheological example situation
• Emergent short-range repulsion for attractively coupled active particles
• Nonequilibrium dynamical structure of a dilute suspension of active particles in a viscoelastic fluid