Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 28, 2026

Label-free Isolation and Enrichment of Cells Through Contactless Dielectrophoresis
Published on: September 3, 2013
Effective drift and diffusion of a particle jumping between mobile and immobile states
Alexander M Berezhkovskii1, Sergey M Bezrukov
1Mathematical and Statistical Computing Laboratory, Division for Computational Bioscience, Center for Information Technology, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.
Abstract:
We study propagation of a particle that jumps between two states, in which it moves with different velocities and diffusion coefficients. To simplify analysis, in the main part of the paper we derive formulas assuming that in one of the states the particle is immobile. A generalization to the case when the particle is mobile in both states is given at the end of the paper. The formulas show how the effective drift velocity and effective diffusion coefficient depend on jump rates between the two states as well as on the particle velocities and diffusion coefficients in these states. Specifically, we find that the effective diffusion coefficient can exhibit a non-monotonic behavior as a function of the ratio of the jump rates.
More Related Videos
06:55Synthesis of Cyclic Polymers and Characterization of Their Diffusive Motion in the Melt State at the Single Molecule Level
Published on: September 26, 2016
07:57Taking Advantage of Reduced Droplet-surface Interaction to Optimize Transport of Bioanalytes in Digital Microfluidics
Published on: November 10, 2014
Related Concept Videos
Diffusion
Diffusion
Carrier Transport
Drift Current:
The drift of charge carriers is started by an external electric field (E). Charged particles, such as electrons and holes, experience an acceleration between collisions with lattice atoms. For electrons, this results in a drift velocity (vd) given by:
Drift Velocity
Behavior of Gas Molecules: Molecular Diffusion, Mean Free Path, and Effusion
Protein Diffusion in the Membrane