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Updated: Jun 1, 2026

Preparation and 3D Tracking of Catalytic Swimming Devices
Published on: July 1, 2016
Geometrically designing the kinematic behavior of catalytic nanomotors
J G Gibbs1, S Kothari, D Saintillan
1Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center, Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602, United States. jggibbs@physast.uga.edu
Abstract:
Catalytic nanomotors with silica microbead heads and TiO(2) arms are systematically designed by dynamic shadowing growth. The swimming trajectories are fine tuned by altering the arm length and orientation exploiting geometry-dependent hydrodynamic interactions at low Reynolds number. The curvature, angular frequency, and radius of curvature of the trajectories change as a function of arm length. Simulations based on the method of regularized Stokeslets are also described and correctly capture the trends observed in the experiments.
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