Camphor-Engine-Driven Micro-Boat Guides Evolution of Chemical Gardens

TL;DR

This study demonstrates how a camphor-powered micro-boat can induce and control the growth of inverse chemical gardens, revealing new insights into self-propulsion and chemical garden evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a novel camphor-driven micro-boat system that influences chemical garden development and provides a phenomenological model for its self-locomotion.

Findings

Inverse chemical gardens grow from the top downward.

Growth rate decreases with higher potassium hexacyanoferrate concentration.

The phenomenological model accurately describes the micro-boat's self-propulsion.

Abstract

A micro-boat self-propelled by a camphor engine, carrying seed crystals of FeCl3, promoted the evolution of chemical gardens when placed on the surface of aqueous solutions of potassium hexacyanoferrate. Inverse chemical gardens (growing from the top downward) were observed. The growth of the inverse chemical gardens was slowed down with an increase in the concentration of the potassium hexacyanoferrate. Heliciform precipitates were formed under the self-propulsion of the micro-boat. A phenomenological model, satisfactorily describing the self locomotion of the camphor-driven micro-boat, is introduced and checked.