Near-wall hydrodynamic slip triggers swimming state transition of microorganisms

TL;DR

This study investigates how near-wall hydrodynamic slip influences microorganism swimming behavior, revealing a transition to wall-bound states at a critical slip length, with implications for biological and microfluidic applications.

Contribution

It provides an exact analytical-numerical analysis of how wall slip alters microswimmer trajectories and identifies critical slip lengths causing state transitions.

Findings

Wall slip can trap microswimmers near surfaces.

Critical slip length depends non-monotonically on initial orientation.

Swimmer type influences the nature of the state transition.

Abstract

Interaction of motile microrganisms with a nearby solid substrate is a well studied phenomenon. However, the effects of hydrodynamic slippage on the substrate have received a little attention. In the present study, within the framework of the squirmer model, we impose a tangential velocity at the swimmer surface as a representation of the ciliatory propulsion and subsequently obtain exact solution of the Stokes equation based on a combined analytical-numerical approach. We illustrate how the near-wall swimming velocities are non-trivially altered by the interaction of wall slip and hydrodynamic forces. We report a characteristic transition of swimming trajectories for both puller and pusher type microswimmers by hydrodynamic slippage if the wall-slip length crosses a critical value. In case of puller microswimmers that are propelled by a breast-stroke like action of their swimming apparatus ahead of their cell body, the wall slip can cause wall-bound trapping swimming states, either as periodic or damped periodic oscillations which would otherwise escape from a no slip wall. The associated critical slip length has a non-monotonic dependence on the initial orientation of the swimmer which is represented by novel phase diagrams. Pushers, which get their propulsive thrust from posterior flagellar action, also show similar swimming state transitions but in this case the wall slip mediated reorientation dynamics and the swimming modes compete in a different fashion to that of the pullers. The present results pave the way for understanding the motion characteristic of biological microswimmers near confinements with hydrophobic walls or strategize the design of microfluidic devices used for sorting and motion rectification of artificial swimmers by tailoring their surface wettability.