1 research outputs found
Phoretic Motion of Spheroidal Particles Due To Self-Generated Solute Gradients
We study theoretically the phoretic motion of a spheroidal particle, which
generates solute gradients in the surrounding unbounded solvent via chemical
reactions active on its surface in a cap-like region centered at one of the
poles of the particle. We derive, within the constraints of the mapping to
classical diffusio-phoresis, an analytical expression for the phoretic velocity
of such an object. This allows us to analyze in detail the dependence of the
velocity on the aspect ratio of the polar and the equatorial diameters of the
particle and on the fraction of the particle surface contributing to the
chemical reaction. The particular cases of a sphere and of an approximation for
a needle-like particle, which are the most common shapes employed in
experimental realizations of such self-propelled objects, are obtained from the
general solution in the limits that the aspect ratio approaches one or becomes
very large, respectively.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, to appear in European Physical Journal