Colloidal Microworms Propelling via a Cooperative Hydrodynamic Conveyor Belt.

We study propulsion arising from microscopic colloidal rotors dynamically assembled and driven in a viscous fluid upon application of an elliptically polarized rotating magnetic field. Close to a confining plate, the motion of this self-assembled microscopic worm results from the cooperative flow generated by the spinning particles which act as a hydrodynamic "conveyor belt." Chains of rotors propel faster than individual ones, until reaching a saturation speed at distances where induced-flow additivity vanishes. By combining experiments and theoretical arguments, we elucidate the mechanism of motion and fully characterize the propulsion speed in terms of the field parameters.

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  Physical Review Letters

• Publication date

  2015-09-22

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Physics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.138301arXiv 1601.00806PMID 26451584
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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