Controlling phoretic swimmer trajectory

Journal article

Individually propulsive catalytic Janus particle swimmers are observed to self-assemble into aggregate swimmers with a wide variety of translational and rotational velocities. The trajectory for a given doublet is shown to be determined by the frozen in relative orientation of the particles. The new swimmers suggest applications as transport and mixing devices, and will allow study of the interplay between propulsion and Brownian phenomena. Furthermore this random assembly process can be controlled using external magnetic fields to orientate individual ferromagnetic swimming particles so as to favor the production of swimmers with particular desirable configurations resulting in linear trajectories. This approach also produces swimmers that can be orientated, and so "steered" by external fields. © 2011 Materials Research Society.

Authors: Ebbens, S; Sadeghi, A; Howse, J; Golestanian, R; Jones, R

• Journal: Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings
• Volume: 1346
• Pages: 49-52
• Publication date: 2011-01-01
• DOI: 10.1557/opl.2011.1003
• EISSN: 1946-4274
• ISSN: 0272-9172
• Language: English