Electrokinetic effects in catalytic platinum-insulator Janus swimmers

By S. Ebbens, D. Gregory, Gary J. Dunderdale, J. Howse, Y. Ibrahim, T. Liverpool, R. Golestanian. 2013

188 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The effect of added salt on the propulsion of Janus platinum-polystyrene colloids in hydrogen peroxide solution is studied experimentally. It is found that micromolar quantities of potassium and silver nitrate salts reduce the swimming velocity by similar amounts, while leading to significantly different effects on the overall rate of catalytic breakdown of hydrogen peroxide. It is argued that the seemingly paradoxical experimental observations could be theoretically explained by using a generalised reaction scheme that involves charged intermediates and has the topology of two nested loops.

Subfields: Condensed Matter Physics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ea0b232ed0f3b70427ee94a15929e293b7199d38

Citations in the corpus

• Statistical Mechanics where Newton's Third Law is Broken (2014, unknown): “[49,50]).”