https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-021-00008-x
Regular Article - Soft Matter
Impact of surface charge on the motion of light-activated Janus micromotors
1
Max Bergmann Center of Biomaterials and Institute for Materials Science, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062, Dresden, Germany
2
Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf e.V., Institute of Radiopharmaceutical Cancer Research, Bautzner Landstrasse 400, 01328, Dresden, Germany
3
Leibniz-Institut für Polymerforschung Dresden e.V., Hohe Straße 6, 01069, Dresden, Germany
4
Institute of Physical Chemistry and Polymer Physics, Technische Universität, 01062, Dresden, Germany
5
Institute for Theoretical Physics, Center for Extreme Matter and Emergent Phenomena, Utrecht University, Princetonplein 5, 3584 CC, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Received:
20
October
2020
Accepted:
4
January
2021
Published online:
23
March
2021
Control over micromotors’ motion is of high relevance for lab-on-a-chip and biomedical engineering, wherein such particles encounter complex microenvironments. Here, we introduce an efficient way to influence Janus micromotors’ direction of motion and speed by modifying their surface properties and those of their immediate surroundings. We fabricated light-responsive Janus micromotors with positive and negative surface charge, both driven by ionic self-diffusiophoresis. These were used to observe direction-of-motion reversal in proximity to glass substrates for which we varied the surface charge. Quantitative analysis allowed us to extract the dependence of the particle velocity on the surface charge density of the substrate. This constitutes the first quantitative demonstration of the substrate’s surface charge on the motility of the light-activated diffusiophoretic motors in water. We provide qualitative understanding of these observations in terms of osmotic flow along the substrate generated through the ions released by the propulsion mechanism. Our results constitute a crucial step in moving toward practical application of self-phoretic artificial micromotors.
© The Author(s) 2021. corrected publication 2021
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