Light-switchable propulsion of active particles with reversible interactions

Hanumantha Rao Vutukuri (), Maciej Lisicki, Eric Lauga and Jan Vermant ()
Additional contact information
Hanumantha Rao Vutukuri: Department of Materials
Maciej Lisicki: University of Warsaw
Eric Lauga: University of Cambridge
Jan Vermant: Department of Materials

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Active systems such as microorganisms and self-propelled particles show a plethora of collective phenomena, including swarming, clustering, and phase separation. Control over the propulsion direction and switchability of the interactions between the individual self-propelled units may open new avenues in designing of materials from within. Here, we present a self-propelled particle system, consisting of half-gold-coated titania (TiO2) particles, in which we can quickly and on-demand reverse the propulsion direction, by exploiting the different photocatalytic activities on both sides. We demonstrate that the reversal in propulsion direction changes the nature of the hydrodynamic interaction from attractive to repulsive and can drive the particle assemblies to undergo both fusion and fission transitions. Moreover, we show these active colloids can act as nucleation sites, and switch rapidly the interactions between active and passive particles, leading to reconfigurable assembly and disassembly. Our experiments are qualitatively described by a minimal hydrodynamic model.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15764-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-15764-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15764-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().