High-speed propulsion of flexible nanowire motors: Theory and experiments
By On Shun Pak, Wei Gao, Joseph Wang, Eric Lauga. 2011
199 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Micro/nano-scale propulsion has attracted considerable recent attention due to its promise for biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery. In this paper, we report on a new experimental design and theoretical modelling of high-speed fuel-free magnetically-driven propellers which exploit the flexibility of nanowires for propulsion. These readily prepared nanomotors display both high dimensional propulsion velocities (up to ≈ 21 μm s−1) and dimensionless speeds (in body lengths per revolution) when compared with natural microorganisms and other artificial propellers. Their propulsion characteristics are studied theoretically using an elastohydrodynamic model which takes into account the elasticity of the nanowire and its hydrodynamic interaction with the fluid medium. The critical role of flexibility in this mode of propulsion is illustrated by simple physical arguments, and is quantitatively investigated with the help of an asymptotic analysis for small-amplitude swimming. The theoretical predictions are then compared with experimental measurements and we obtain good agreement. Finally, we demonstrate the operation of these nanomotors in a real biological environment (human serum), emphasizing the robustness of their propulsion performance and their promise for biomedical applications.
Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics, Ecology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3ca7912244d13551dbf792713d1105bfaa40db3b
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In Aerospace Engineering
In Condensed Matter Physics
- Saverio E. Spagnolie
- Eric Lauga
- David Saintillan
- S. Michelin
- J. Rodrigo Vélez-Cordero
- T. Powers
- T. Pedley
- Alfredo Soldati
In Ecology
Citations in the corpus
- Hydrodynamics of self-propulsion near a boundary: predictions and accuracy of far-field approximations (2012, background): “…scales, including chemically driven bimetallic nano-rods (Paxton et al. 2004; Fournier-Bidoz et al. 2005; Rückner & Kapral 2007), magnetic nano-propellers (Ghosh & Fischer 2009; Pak et al. 2011), and undulatory chains of magnetic colloidal particles (Dreyfus et al. 2005) (see also Wang 2009).”