Abstract

Unlike pressure-driven flows, surface-mediated phoretic flows provide efficient means to drive fluid motion on very small scales. Colloidal particles covered with chemically-active patches with nonzero phoretic mobility (e.g. Janus particles) swim using self-generated gradients, and similar physics can be exploited to create phoretic pumps. Here we analyse in detail the design principles of phoretic pumps and show that for a minimal phoretic pump, consisting of 3 distinct chemical patches, the optimal arrangement of the patches maximizing the flow rate is universal and independent of chemistry.

Details

Title
Universal optimal geometry of minimal phoretic pumps
Author
Michelin, Sébastien 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Lauga, Eric 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

1  LadHyX – Département de Mécanique, Ecole Polytechnique – CNRS, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Palaiseau, France 
2  Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom 
Pages
1-7
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Jul 2019
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-46953-8
ProQuest document ID
2264158370
Copyright
© 2019. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.