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Abstract
Artificial microswimmers, or ‘microbots’, have the potential to revolutionise non-invasive medicine and microfluidics. Microbots that are powered by self-phoretic mechanisms, such as Janus particles, often harness a solute fuel in their environment. Traditionally, self-phoretic particles are point like, but slender phoretic rods have become an increasingly prevalent design. While there has been substantial interest in creating efficient asymptotic theories for slender phoretic rods, hitherto such theories have been restricted to straight rods with axisymmetric patterning. However, modern manufacturing methods will soon allow fabrication of slender phoretic filaments with complex three-dimensional shapes. In this paper, we develop a slender body theory for the solute of self-diffusiophoretic filaments of arbitrary three-dimensional shape and patterning. We demonstrate analytically that, unlike other slender body theories, first-order azimuthal variations arising from curvature and confinement can make a leading-order contribution to the swimming kinematics.
Original language | English |
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Article number | A24 |
Number of pages | 43 |
Journal | Journal of Fluid Mechanics |
Volume | 898 |
Early online date | 9 Jul 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 10 Sept 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:T.D.M.-J. and P.K. gratefully acknowledge funding from EPSRC Bright Ideas grant no. EP/R041555/1. S.M. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement 714027 to S.M.). The authors would like to thank E. Lauga for helpful discussions on autophoretic theory, and L. Koens for helpful discussions on slender body theory.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Keywords
- slender-body theory
- propulsion
- Slender-body theory
- Propulsion
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Mechanics of Materials
- Mechanical Engineering
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Dive into the research topics of 'Slender phoretic theory of chemically active filaments'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Artificial Transforming Swimmers for Precision Microfluidics Tasks
Montenegro-Johnson, T. (Principal Investigator)
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council
1/06/18 → 31/05/20
Project: Research Councils