English

Anti-Swarming: Structure and Dynamics of Repulsive Chemically Active Particles

Soft Condensed Matter 2017-12-04 v1

Abstract

Chemically active Brownian particles with surface catalytic reactions may repel each other due to diffusiophoretic interactions in the reaction and product concentration fields. The system behavior can be described by a `chemical' coupling parameter Γc\Gamma_c that compares the strength of diffusiophoretic repulsion to Brownian motion, and by a mapping to the classical electrostatic One Component Plasma (OCP) system. When confined to a constant-volume domain, Body-Centered Cubic crystals spontaneously form from random initial configurations when the repulsion is strong enough to overcome Brownian motion. Face-Centered Cubic crystals may also be stable. The `melting point' of the `liquid-to-crystal transition' occurs at Γc140\Gamma_c\approx140 for both BCC and FCC lattices.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1711.01446,
  title  = {Anti-Swarming: Structure and Dynamics of Repulsive Chemically Active Particles},
  author = {Wen Yan and John F. Brady},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.01446},
  year   = {2017}
}