https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-021-00065-2
Regular Article - Living Systems
Regimes of motion of magnetocapillary swimmers
1
Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energy (IEK-11), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Fürther Straße 248, 90429, Nuremberg, Germany
2
PULS Group, Department of Physics, Interdisciplinary Center for Nanostructured Films, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Cauerstraße 3, 91058, Erlangen, Germany
3
GRASP Lab, CESAM Research Unit, Université de Liège, Allée du 6 Août 19, 4000, Liège, Belgium
4
IST Austria, Lab Building West, Am Campus 1, 3400, Klosterneuburg, Austria
5
Group for Computational Life Sciences, Division of Physical Chemistry, Ruđer Bošković Institute, P.P. 180, Bijenička cesta 54, 10002, Zagreb, Croatia
6
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Department of Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Fürther Straße 248, 90429, Nuremberg, Germany
Received:
9
November
2020
Accepted:
31
March
2021
Published online:
24
April
2021
The dynamics of a triangular magnetocapillary swimmer is studied using the lattice Boltzmann method. We extend on our previous work, which deals with the self-assembly and a specific type of the swimmer motion characterized by the swimmer’s maximum velocity centred around the particle’s inverse viscous time. Here, we identify additional regimes of motion. First, modifying the ratio of surface tension and magnetic forces allows to study the swimmer propagation in the regime of significantly lower frequencies mainly defined by the strength of the magnetocapillary potential. Second, introducing a constant magnetic contribution in each of the particles in addition to their magnetic moment induced by external fields leads to another regime characterized by strong in-plane swimmer reorientations that resemble experimental observations.
© The Author(s) 2021
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