Active motion of a Janus particle by self-thermophoresis in a defocused laser beam.

By Hong-Ren Jiang, N. Yoshinaga, Masaki Sano. Physical Review Letters, 2010

729 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study self-propulsion of a half-metal coated colloidal particle under laser irradiation. The motion is caused by self-thermophoresis: i.e., absorption of a laser at the metal-coated side of the particle creates local temperature gradient which in turn drives the particle by thermophoresis. To clarify the mechanism, temperature distribution and a thermal slip flow field around a microscale Janus particle are measured for the first time. With measured temperature drop across the particle, the speed of self-propulsion is corroborated with the prediction based on accessible parameters. As an application for driving a micromachine, a microrotor is demonstrated.

Subfields: Computational Mechanics, Condensed Matter Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2b75fd2429f00abfbf3dabe99437fadbda9cfc22

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In Computational Mechanics

In Condensed Matter Physics

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

Citations in the corpus

Optical tweezers and their applications (2018, background): “Two typical examples of self-propelling particles are artificial Janus particles and biological bacteria such as Escherichia coli, both of them well characterised by optical tweezers [264, 265].”
Phoretic self-propulsion at finite Péclet numbers (2014, background): “These so-called Janus particles are typically axisymmetric and have been the focus of most experimental, theoretical and numerical studies on autophoretic particles [11, 18, 19, 21, 23, 37].”
A micrometre-sized heat engine operating between bacterial reservoirs (2016, positive): “In light of the recent advances in the fabrication of micro and nanoparticles that can be rendered active[25] by chemical[26], optical[27], electric and magentic fields[28], active reservoirs can readily provide a self-contained source of noise.”
Physics of microswimmers—single particle motion and collective behavior: a review (2014, methodology): “In this case, the cap is heated by a laser beam, which generates a temperature difference between the two sides of the Janus particle; the colloid then diffuses in this temperature gradient (Jiang et al., 2010).”