Hydrodynamic interactions in a binary-mixture colloidal monolayer

TL;DR

This paper investigates how hydrodynamic interactions affect a binary colloidal monolayer, revealing a new regime where large particles' diffusion is governed by small particles' dynamics due to hydrodynamic coupling.

Contribution

It extends existing models to binary mixtures, uncovering a novel regime where large particles' effective diffusion is dictated by small particles' hydrodynamic interactions.

Findings

A new regime where large particles obey Fick's law at large scales.

Collective diffusivity of big particles depends on small particles' diffusivity.

Hydrodynamic coupling significantly influences binary colloidal dynamics.

Abstract

A colloidal monolayer embedded in the bulk of a fluid experiences a "compressible", long-range hydrodynamic interaction which, far from boundaries, leads to a breakdown of Fick's law above a well defined length scale, showing up as anomalous collective diffusion. We here extend the model to study the effect of the hydrodynamic interaction on a monolayer formed by two types of particles. The most interesting finding is a new regime, in the limit of very dissimilar kinds of particles, where the effective dynamics of the concentration of "big" (slow) particles appears to obey Fick's law at large scales, but the corresponding collective diffusivity is completely determined, through hydrodynamic coupling, by the diffusivity of the "small" (fast) particles.