Quantitative measurements of non-equilibrium interactions of catalytic microswimmers with dual colloidal tracers

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Carrasco, Celso, Martinet, Quentin, Shen, Zaiyi, Lintuvuori, Juho S., Palacci, Jérémie, Aubret, Antoine
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866910586744340480
author Carrasco, Celso
Martinet, Quentin
Shen, Zaiyi
Lintuvuori, Juho S.
Palacci, Jérémie
Aubret, Antoine
author_facet Carrasco, Celso
Martinet, Quentin
Shen, Zaiyi
Lintuvuori, Juho S.
Palacci, Jérémie
Aubret, Antoine
contents Catalytic microswimmers convert the chemical energy of a fuel into motion, sustaining spatial chemical gradients and fluid flows that drive their propulsion. This leads to unconventional individual behavior and the emergence of collective dynamics, absent in equilibrium. The characterization of the nonequilibrium interactions driven by those concentration gradients and flows around microswimmers is challenging owing to the importance of fluctuations at the microscale. Previous experiments have focused on large Janus microspheres attached to a surface, and did not investigate non-equilibrium interactions for freely moving microswimmers of various shapes. Here we show a massive dependence of the non-equilibrium interactions on the shape of small catalytic microswimmers. We perform tracking experiments at high troughput to map non-equilibrium interactions between swimmers and colloidal tracers in 2D, accurate down to tracer velocity of 100nm/s. In addition, we devise a novel experimental method combining two types of tracers with differing phoretic mobility to disentangle phoretic interactions in concentration gradients from hydrodynamic flows. We benchmark the method with experiments on a single chemically active site and on a catalytic microswimmer tethered to a surface. We further investigate the activity-driven interactions of freely moving catalytic dimers as microswimmers, for a wide range of aspect ratio between the active and passive part. We confront our results with standard theoretical models of microswimmers near surfaces and show poor agreement, ruling out phoresis as the main interaction for catalytic swimmers. Our findings provide robust quantitative measurements of the non-equilibrium interactions of catalytic microswimmers of various geometry with their environment. The work notably indicates the need for theoretical development, and lays the groundwork for the quantitative description of collective behavior in suspensions of phoretically-driven colloidal suspensions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_01024
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Quantitative measurements of non-equilibrium interactions of catalytic microswimmers with dual colloidal tracers
Carrasco, Celso
Martinet, Quentin
Shen, Zaiyi
Lintuvuori, Juho S.
Palacci, Jérémie
Aubret, Antoine
Soft Condensed Matter
Catalytic microswimmers convert the chemical energy of a fuel into motion, sustaining spatial chemical gradients and fluid flows that drive their propulsion. This leads to unconventional individual behavior and the emergence of collective dynamics, absent in equilibrium. The characterization of the nonequilibrium interactions driven by those concentration gradients and flows around microswimmers is challenging owing to the importance of fluctuations at the microscale. Previous experiments have focused on large Janus microspheres attached to a surface, and did not investigate non-equilibrium interactions for freely moving microswimmers of various shapes. Here we show a massive dependence of the non-equilibrium interactions on the shape of small catalytic microswimmers. We perform tracking experiments at high troughput to map non-equilibrium interactions between swimmers and colloidal tracers in 2D, accurate down to tracer velocity of 100nm/s. In addition, we devise a novel experimental method combining two types of tracers with differing phoretic mobility to disentangle phoretic interactions in concentration gradients from hydrodynamic flows. We benchmark the method with experiments on a single chemically active site and on a catalytic microswimmer tethered to a surface. We further investigate the activity-driven interactions of freely moving catalytic dimers as microswimmers, for a wide range of aspect ratio between the active and passive part. We confront our results with standard theoretical models of microswimmers near surfaces and show poor agreement, ruling out phoresis as the main interaction for catalytic swimmers. Our findings provide robust quantitative measurements of the non-equilibrium interactions of catalytic microswimmers of various geometry with their environment. The work notably indicates the need for theoretical development, and lays the groundwork for the quantitative description of collective behavior in suspensions of phoretically-driven colloidal suspensions.
title Quantitative measurements of non-equilibrium interactions of catalytic microswimmers with dual colloidal tracers
topic Soft Condensed Matter
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.01024