23 research outputs found
Chiral sedimentation of extended objects in viscous media
We study theoretically the chirality of a generic rigid object's
sedimentation in a fluid under gravity in the low Reynolds number regime. We
represent the object as a collection of small Stokes spheres or stokeslets, and
the gravitational force as a constant point force applied at an arbitrary point
of the object. For a generic configuration of stokeslets and forcing point, the
motion takes a simple form in the nearly free draining limit where the
stokeslet radius is arbitrarily small. In this case, the internal hydrodynamic
interactions between stokeslets are weak, and the object follows a helical path
while rotating at a constant angular velocity about a fixed axis. This
is independent of initial orientation, and thus constitutes a chiral
response for the object. Even though there can be no such chiral response in
the absence of hydrodynamic interactions between the stokeslets, the angular
velocity obtains a fixed, nonzero limit as the stokeslet radius approaches
zero. We characterize empirically how depends on the placement of the
stokeslets, concentrating on three-stokeslet objects with the external force
applied far from the stokeslets. Objects with the largest are aligned
along the forcing direction. In this case, the limiting varies as the
inverse square of the minimum distance between stokeslets. We illustrate the
prevalence of this robust chiral motion with experiments on small macroscopic
objects of arbitrary shape.Comment: 35 pages, 10 figures; Section VII.A redone and other edits made for
clarity. Accepted by Phys. Rev.
3D Brownian Diffusion of Submicron-Sized Particle Clusters
We report on the translation and rotation of particle clusters made through
the combination of spherical building blocks. These clusters present ideal
model systems to study the motion of objects with complex shape. Because they
could be separated into fractions of well-defined configurations on a
sufficient scale and their overall dimensions were below 300 nm, the
translational and rotational diffusion coefficients of particle duplets,
triplets and tetrahedrons could be determined by a combination of polarized
dynamic light scattering (DLS) and depolarized dynamic light scattering (DDLS).
The use of colloidal clusters for DDLS experiments overcomes the limitation of
earlier experiments on the diffusion of complex objects near surfaces because
the true 3D diffusion can be studied. When the exact geometry of the complex
assemblies is known, different hydrodynamic models for calculating the
diffusion coefficient for objects with complex shapes could be applied. Because
hydrodynamic friction must be restricted to the cluster surface the so-called
shell model, in which the surface is represented as a shell of small friction
elements, was most suitable to describe the dynamics. A quantitative comparison
of the predictions from theoretical modeling with the results obtained by DDLS
showed an excellent agreement between experiment and theory
Two-Dimensional Sol-Gel Transition in Silica Alkoxides at the Air/Water Interface
We have investigated the 2D viscoelastic behavior of the reactive sol-gel transition of silica alkoxides deposited at the air/acidic water interface of a Langmuir trough by oscillatory interfacial rheology. The storage and loss moduli increased with time as the hydrolysis-condensation reaction took place. There was evidence of a 2D gel point, which was discussed within the percolation theory framework. The power law dependence value of n = 0.63 was similar to those found for bulk systems. The final network had a low fractal dimension value of df = 1.17 (for a 2D system) indicating a rather open structure, in agreement with acidic catalysis, and a somewhat low effective modulus of 20 MPa