Degenerate states, emergent dynamics and fluid mixing by magnetic rotors

Wireless Magnetoelectrochemical Induction of Rotational Motion

Electromagnetically induced rotation is a key process of many technological systems that are used in daily life, especially for energy conversion. In this context, the Lorentz force-induced deviation of charges is a crucial physical phenomenon to generate rotation. Herein, they combine the latter with the concept of bipolar electrochemistry to design a wireless magnetoelectrochemical rotor. Such a device can be considered as a wet analog of a conventional electric motor. The main driving force that propels this actuator is the result of the synergy between the charge-compensating ion flux along a bipolar electrode and an external magnetic field applied orthogonally to the surface of the object. The trajectory of the wirelessly polarized rotor can be controlled by the orientation of the magnetic field relative to the direction of the global electric field, producing a predictable clockwise or anticlockwise motion. Fine-tuning of the applied electric field allows for addressing conducting objects having variable characteristic lengths.

Self-Sustained Rotation of Lorentz Force-Driven Janus Systems

Rotation is an interesting type of motion that is currently involved in many technological applications. In this frame, different and sophisticated external stimuli to induce rotation have been developed. In this work, we have designed a simple and original self-propelled bimetallic Janus rotor powered by the synergy between a spontaneous electric and ionic current, produced by two coupled redox reactions, and a magnetic field, placed orthogonal to the surface of the device. Such a combination induces a magnetohydrodynamic vortex at each extremity of the rotor arm, which generates an overall driving force able to propel the rotor. Furthermore, the motion of the self-polarized object can be controlled by the direction of the spontaneous electric current or the orientation of the external magnetic field, resulting in a predictable clockwise or anticlockwise motion. In addition, these devices exhibit directional corkscrew-type displacement, when representing their displacement as a function of time, producing time-space specular behavior. The concept can be used to design alternative self-mixing systems for a variety of (micro)fluidic equipment.

An experimental study of the merging flow of polymer solutions in a T-shaped microchannel

The merging flow through a T-junction is relevant to sample mixing and particle manipulation in microfluidic devices. It has been extensively studied for Newtonian fluids, particularly in the high inertial regime where flow bifurcation takes place for enhanced mixing. However, the effects of fluid rheological properties on the merging flow have remained largely unexplored. We investigate here the flow of five types of polymer solutions along with water in a planar T-shaped microchannel over a wide range of flow rates for a systematic understanding of the effects of fluid shear thinning and elasticity. It is found that the merging flow near the stagnation point of the T-junction can either be vortex dominated or have unsteady streamlines, depending on the strength of elasticity and shear thinning present in the fluid. Moreover, the shear thinning effect is found to induce a symmetric unsteady flow in comparison to the asymmetric unsteady flow in the viscoelastic fluids, the latter of which exhibits greater interfacial fluctuations.

Diagrammatics of tunable interactions in anisotropic colloids in rotating electric or magnetic fields: New kind of dipole-like interactions

Anisotropic particles are widely presented in nature, from colloidal to bacterial systems, and control over their interactions is of crucial importance for many applications, from self-assembly of novel materials to microfluidics. Placed in rapidly rotating external electric fields, colloidal particles attain a tunable long-range and many-body part in their interactions. For spherical colloids, this approach has been shown to offer rich capabilities to construct the tunable interactions via designing the internal structure of particles and spatial hodographs of external rotating fields, but in the case of anisotropic particles, the interactions remain poorly understood. Here, we show that tunable interactions between anisotropic rod-like and spheroidal colloidal particles in rotating electric or magnetic fields can be calculated and analyzed with the diagrammatic technique we developed in the present work. With this technique, we considered an in-plane rotating electric field, obtained the long-range asymptotics of the anisotropic interactions, calculated the tunable interactions between particles rotating synchronously, and found conditions for rotator repulsion. We compared the mechanisms providing tunable interactions to those for orientational (Keesom), induction (Debye), and dispersion (London) interactions in molecular systems and found that the tunable interactions between anisotropic particles represent a novel kind of dipole-like interaction. The method can be directly generalized for magnetically induced interactions, 3D systems, and fields with spatial hodographs. The results provide significant advance in theoretical methods for tunable interactions in colloids and, therefore, are of broad interest in condensed matter, chemical physics, physical chemistry, materials science, and soft matter.