2024/01/10 by Danne M. van Roon, van Roon, Danne M., Giorgio Volpe +5
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Micro and Nano Robotics #Microfluidic and Bio-sensing Technologies #Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2401.05237
openalex publication_date 2024/01/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Persistent motion of microswimmers near boundaries is known to result in surface accumulation. Recently it was shown experimentally that surface accumulation of microswimmers is impacted primarily by steric forces and short-ranged hydrodynamics. A way to control surface accumulation is by reducing the contact surface area between swimmers and surface by modifying its topography, typically through the application of microscale structure. In this work, we introduce a three-dimensional(3D) model of a microswimmer navigating a volume bounded by a top and bottom surface. We describe the swimmer-surface interaction with an effective short-ranged hydrodynamic alignment force, and study numerically the effect of surface textures, modelled by convex obstacles, on the surface accumulation of chiral and non-chiral microswimmers. We find that, depending on the angular velocity of the swimmer, and the alignment force, convex obstacles can either hinder or enhance surface accumulation. We discuss potential applications to sorting of microswimmers by their angular velocity.