Confinement effects on diffusiophoretic self-propellers

Abstract

We study theoretically the effects of spatial confinement on the phoretic motion of a dissolved particle driven by composition gradients generated by chemical reactions of their solvent, which are active only on certain parts of the particle surface. We show that the presence of confining walls increases in a similar way both the composition gradients and the viscous friction, and the overall result of these competing effects is an increase in the phoretic velocity of the particle. For the case of steric repulsion only between the particle and the product molecules of the chemical reactions, the absolute value of the velocity remains nonetheless rather small. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.