Related papers: Nanoscopic spontaneous motion of liquid trains: no…
Spontaneous motion of an oil droplet driven by chemical nonequilibricity is reported. It is shown that the droplet undergoes regular rhythmic motion under appropriately designed boundary conditions, whereas it exhibits random motion in an…
Unlike crystalline solids or ideal gases, transport properties remain difficult to describe from a microscopic point of view in liquids, whose dynamics result from complex energetic and entropic contributions at the atomic scale. Two…
In this article, we describe the instability of a contact line under nonequilibrium conditions mainly based on the results of our recent studies. Two experimental examples are presented: the self-propelled motion of a liquid droplet and…
Microscopic active droplets are able to swim autonomously in viscous flows: this puzzling feature stems from solute exchanges with the surrounding fluid via surface reactions or their spontaneous solubilisation, and the interfacial flows…
The numerical simulation of a Poiseuille flow in a narrow channel using the molecular dynamics simulation (MDS) is performed. Poiseuille flow of liquid Argon in a carbon nanochannel is simulated by embedding the fluid particles in a uniform…
We use molecular dynamics simulations to study the behavior of a compressible Lennard-Jones fluid in simple shear flow in a two-dimensional nanochannel. The system is equilibrated in the fluid phase close to the triple point at which gas,…
We study theoretically the self-propulsion dynamics of a small droplet on general curved surfaces by a variational approach. A new reduced model is derived based on careful computations for the capillary energy and the viscous dissipation…
We demonstrate \textit{bendotaxis}, a novel mechanism for droplet self-transport at small scales. A combination of bending and capillarity in a thin channel causes a pressure gradient that, in turn, results in the spontaneous movement of a…
In this work we consider theoretically the problem of a Newtonian droplet moving in an otherwise quiescent infinite viscoelastic fluid under the influence of an externally applied temperature gradient. The outer fluid is modelled by the…
Molecular dynamics simulations of miscible and partially miscible binary Lennard--Jones mixtures are used to study the dynamics and thermodynamics of vapor condensation onto a non-volatile liquid drop in the canonical ensemble. When the…
Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…
This study presents a first-principles model to predict the two-phase pressure drop in gas-liquid intermittent flow through round capillaries, which serve as the simplest analogous of a porous medium. Building upon the classical capillary…
We report an experimental investigation of the spontaneous motion of liquid droplets on soft gels with a crosslinking gradient. By systematically adjusting the spatial difference in crosslinking density, we observed that millimeter-sized…
Capillary droplets form due to surface tension when two immiscible fluids are mixed. We describe the motion of gravity-driven capillary droplets flowing through narrow constrictions and obstacle arrays in both simulations and experiments.…
We report the generation of directed self-propelled motion of a droplet of aniline oil with a velocity on the order of centimeters per second on an aqueous phase. It is found that, depending on the initial conditions, the droplet shows…
Making liquid droplets move spontaneously on solid surfaces is a key challenge in lab-on-chip and heat exchanger technologies. The best-known mechanism, a wettability gradient, does not generally move droplets rapidly enough and cannot…
Vesicle dynamics in unbounded Poiseuille flow is analyzed using a small-deformation theory. Our analytical results quantitatively describe vesicle migration and provide new physical insights. At low ratio between the inner and outer…
We study immiscible two-phase flow of a compressible and an incompressible fluid inside a capillary tube of varying radius under steady-state conditions. The incompressible fluid is Newtonian and the compressible fluid is an inviscid ideal…
Molecular dynamics simulations of dense and rarefied fluids comprising small chain molecules in chemically patterned nano-channels predict a novel switching from Poiseuille to plug flow along the channel. We also demonstrate behavior akin…
We study transport in synthetic, bi-disperse porous structures, with arrays of microchannels interconnected by a nanoporous layer. These structures are inspired by the xylem tissue in vascular plants, in which sap water travels from the…