Clustering-induced self-propulsion of isotropic autophoretic particles

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that isotropic autophoretic particles can achieve self-propulsion through clustering interactions, breaking symmetry collectively rather than individually, with implications for designing active matter systems.

Contribution

It reveals a novel mechanism where identical isotropic particles self-propel by forming clusters, enabling symmetry-breaking without anisotropic design.

Findings

Particles form anisotropic clusters via phoretic and hydrodynamic interactions.

Clustering induces self-propulsion in otherwise non-motile particles.

Results are robust to thermal noise and Brownian motion.

Abstract

Self-diffusiophoretic particles exploit local concentration gradients of a solute species in order to self-propel at the micron scale. While an isolated chemically- and geometrically-isotropic particle cannot swim, we show that it can achieve self-propulsion through interactions with other individually-non-motile particles by forming geometrically-anisotropic clusters via phoretic and hydrodynamic interactions. This result identifies a new route to symmetry-breaking for the concentration field and to self-propulsion, that is not based on an anisotropic design, but on the collective dynamics of identical and homogeneous active particles. Using full numerical simulations as well as theoretical modelling of the clustering process, the statistics of the propulsion properties are obtained for arbitrary initial arrangement of the particles. The robustness of these results to thermal noise, and more generally the effect of Brownian motion of the particles, is also discussed.