Related papers: Efficacy of self-phoretic colloids and microswimme…
We consider the efficiency of self-phoretic colloidal particles (swimmers) as a function of the heterogeneity in the surface reaction rate. The set of fluid, species, and electrostatic continuity equations is solved analytically using a…
Active diffusiophoresis - swimming through interaction with a self-generated, neutral, solute gradient - is a paradigm for autonomous motion at the micrometer scale. We study this propulsion mechanism within a linear response theory.…
Surface interactions provide a class of mechanisms which can be employed for propulsion of micro- and nanometer sized particles. We investigate the related efficiency of externally and self-propelled swimmers. A general scaling relation is…
The swimming of an assembly of rigid spheres immersed in a viscous fluid of infinite extent is studied in low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. The instantaneous swimming velocity and rate of dissipation are expressed in terms of the…
We theoretically study the self-propulsion of a thin (slender) colloid driven by asymmetric chemical reactions on its surface at vanishing Reynolds number. Using the method of matched asymptotic expansions, we obtain the colloid…
We consider a swimmer consisting of a collinear assembly of three spheres connected by two slender rods. This swimmer can propel itself forward by varying the lengths of the rods in a way that is not invariant under time reversal. Although…
Small objects can swim by generating around them fields or gradients which in turn induce fluid motion past their surface by phoretic surface effects. We quantify for arbitrary swimmer shapes and surface patterns, how efficient swimming…
We use the dynamic length and time scale separation in suspensions to formulate a general description of colloidal thermophoresis. Our approach allows an unambiguous definition of separate contributions to the colloidal flux and clarifies…
Micro-organisms can be classified into three different types according to their size. We study the efficiency of the swimming of micro-organism in two dimensional fluid as a device for helping the explanation of this hierarchy in the size.…
Self-chemophoresis is an appealing and quite successful interpretation of the motility exhibited by certain chemically active colloidal particles suspended in a solution of their "fuel": the particle has a phoretic response to…
Charged colloidal particles propel themselves through asymmetric fluxes of chemically generated ions on their surface. We show that asymmetry in the surface charge distribution introduces a new mode of self-phoretic motion for chemically…
Phoretic swimmers provide new avenues to study non-equilibrium statistical physics and are also hailed as a promising technology for bioengineering at the cellular scale. Exact solutions for the locomotion of such swimmers have been…
We present a complete reciprocal description of particle motion inside multi-component fluids that extends the conventional Onsager formulation of non-equilibrium transport to systems where the thermodynamic forces are non-uniform on the…
The realization of artificial microscopic swimmers able to propel in viscous fluids is an emergent research field of fundamental interest and vast technological applications. For certain functionalities, the efficiency of the microswimmer…
Propulsion at microscopic scales is often achieved through propagating traveling waves along hair-like organelles called flagella. Taylor's two-dimensional swimming sheet model is frequently used to provide insight into problems of…
Recent findings of possible applications of bio-friendly synthetic self-phoretic swimmers, have motivated the researchers in investigating the various motion-generating mechanisms to optimize the operating characteristics of the same. In…
We introduce a measure for energetic efficiency of biological cilia acting individually or collectively and numerically determine the optimal beating patterns according to this criterion. Maximizing the efficiency of a single cilium leads…
A variety of swimming microorganisms, called ciliates, exploit the bending of a large number of small and densely-packed organelles, termed cilia, in order to propel themselves in a viscous fluid. We consider a spherical envelope model for…
Among the few methods which have been proposed to create small-scale swimmers, those relying on self-phoretic mechanisms present an interesting design challenge in that chemical gradients are required to generate net propulsion. Building on…
The swimming of a spheroid immersed in a viscous fluid and performing surface deformations periodically in time is studied on the basis of Stokes equations of low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. The average over a period of time of the…