Self-Diffusiophoretic Colloidal Propulsion Near a Solid Boundary

TL;DR

This paper investigates the behavior of self-propelling colloidal particles near a solid boundary, revealing how their trajectories depend on surface coverage and initial orientation, with implications for controlled microscale motion.

Contribution

It provides a combined numerical and analytical study of diffusiophoretic propulsion near walls, including phase diagrams of particle trajectories based on coverage and orientation.

Findings

Particles can repel, rebound, skim, or stay stationary near walls.

Trajectory depends on surface coverage and initial orientation.

Particles never reach the wall due to lubrication resistance.

Abstract

We study the diffusiophoretic self-propulsion of a colloidal catalytic particle due to a surface chemical reaction in a vicinity of a solid wall. Diffusiophoresis is a chemico-mechanical transduction mechanism in which a concentration gradient of an interacting solute produces an unbalanced force on a colloidal particle and drives it along the gradient. We consider a spherical particle with an axisymmetric reacting cap covering the polar angle range $0\le \theta\le \theta_{cap}$ in the presence of a repulsive solute, near an infinite planar wall, and solve the coupled solute concentration and Stokes equations, using a mixture of numerical and analytic arguments. The resulting particle trajectory is determined by $\theta_{cap}$ and the initial orientation of the symmetry axis with respect to the plane. At normal incidence the particle initially moves away from or towards the wall, depending on whether the cap faces towards or away, respectively, but even in the latter case the particle never reaches the wall due to hydrodynamic lubrication resistance. For other initial orientations, when $\theta_{cap}\le 115^{\circ}$ the particle either moves away immediately or else rotates along its trajectory so as to cause the active side to face the wall and the particle to rebound. For higher coverage we find trajectories where the particle skims along the wall at constant separation or else comes to rest. We provide a phase diagram giving the nature of the trajectory (repulsion, rebound, skimming or stationary) as a function of $\theta_{cap}$ and the initial orientation.