Interactions and pattern formation in a macroscopic magnetocapillary SALR system of mermaid cereal

Alireza Hooshanginejad, Jack-William Barotta, Victoria Spradlin, Giuseppe Pucci, Robert Hunt and Daniel M. Harris ()
Additional contact information
Alireza Hooshanginejad: Brown University
Jack-William Barotta: Brown University
Victoria Spradlin: Brown University
Giuseppe Pucci: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto di Nanotecnologia (CNR-NANOTEC)
Robert Hunt: Brown University
Daniel M. Harris: Brown University

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract When particles are deposited at a fluid interface they tend to aggregate by capillary attraction to minimize the overall potential energy of the system. In this work, we embed floating millimetric disks with permanent magnets to introduce a competing repulsion effect and study their pattern formation in equilibrium. The pairwise energy landscape of two disks is described by a short-range attraction and long-range repulsion (SALR) interaction potential, previously documented in a number of microscopic condensed matter systems. Such competing interactions enable a variety of pairwise equilibrium states, including the possibility of a local minimum energy corresponding to a finite disk spacing. Two-dimensional (2D) experiments and simulations in confined geometries demonstrate that as the areal packing fraction is increased, the dilute repulsion-dominated lattice state becomes unstable to the spontaneous formation of localized clusters, which eventually merge into a system-spanning striped pattern. Finally, we demonstrate that the equilibrium pattern can be externally manipulated by the application of a supplemental vertical magnetic force that remotely enhances the effective capillary attraction.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49754-4 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:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-49754-4

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49754-4

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 ().