Marangoni swimmer pushing particle raft under 1D confinement
Fuente:
arXiv
Salvato in:
| Autori principali: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2025
|
| Soggetti: | |
| Accesso online: | |
| Tags: |
Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
|
| _version_ | 1866909746760515584 |
|---|---|
| author | Maitra, Abhradeep Pandey, Anupam Michelin, Sebastien Jung, Sunghwan |
| author_facet | Maitra, Abhradeep Pandey, Anupam Michelin, Sebastien Jung, Sunghwan |
| contents | Active matter systems, due to their spontaneous self-propulsion ability, hold potential for future applications in healthcare and environmental sustainability. Marangoni swimmers, a type of synthetic active matter, are a common model system for understanding the underlying physics. Existing studies of the interactions of active matter with passive particles have mostly focused on the modification of the behavior of the passive particles. In contrast, we analyse here experimentally the impact on the self-propulsion of camphor-infused agarose disks (active) of their interactions with floating hollow glass microspheres (passive) within an annular channel. Two distinct regimes are observed: a steady regime with uni-directional motion of the swimmer at low packing fractions (ϕ_{\textrm{ini}} \lesssim 0.45) and an oscillatory regime with to-and-fro motion at higher packing fractions (ϕ_{\textrm{ini}} \gtrsim 0.45). In the former, the swimmer pushes nearly the entire particle raft together with it, like a towing cargo, causing a decrease in swimmer speed with increasing packing fraction due to the additional drag from the particle raft. A simplified force-balance model is finally proposed that captures the experimental trend in swimmer speed reasonably well. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_15205 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Marangoni swimmer pushing particle raft under 1D confinement Maitra, Abhradeep Pandey, Anupam Michelin, Sebastien Jung, Sunghwan Soft Condensed Matter Active matter systems, due to their spontaneous self-propulsion ability, hold potential for future applications in healthcare and environmental sustainability. Marangoni swimmers, a type of synthetic active matter, are a common model system for understanding the underlying physics. Existing studies of the interactions of active matter with passive particles have mostly focused on the modification of the behavior of the passive particles. In contrast, we analyse here experimentally the impact on the self-propulsion of camphor-infused agarose disks (active) of their interactions with floating hollow glass microspheres (passive) within an annular channel. Two distinct regimes are observed: a steady regime with uni-directional motion of the swimmer at low packing fractions (ϕ_{\textrm{ini}} \lesssim 0.45) and an oscillatory regime with to-and-fro motion at higher packing fractions (ϕ_{\textrm{ini}} \gtrsim 0.45). In the former, the swimmer pushes nearly the entire particle raft together with it, like a towing cargo, causing a decrease in swimmer speed with increasing packing fraction due to the additional drag from the particle raft. A simplified force-balance model is finally proposed that captures the experimental trend in swimmer speed reasonably well. |
| title | Marangoni swimmer pushing particle raft under 1D confinement |
| topic | Soft Condensed Matter |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.15205 |