A Three-Step Scenario Involved in Particle Capture on a Pore Edge

A scenario is proposed to describe the capture of a spherical particle around a cylindrical pore. This geometry, "ideal" as far as the problem of particle capture on a filtration membrane is concerned, is clearly relevant in view of the pore-scale geometry of nucleopore or microsieve filtration membranes, and also of some microfluidic systems used to perform fluid-particle separation. The present scenario consists of three successive steps: particle deposition on the membrane away from the pore, subsequent reentrainment of some of the deposited particles by rolling on the membrane surface, and final arrest by a stabilizing van der Waals torque when the particle rolls over the pore edge. A modeling of these three steps requires the hydrodynamic and physicochemical particle-membrane interactions to be detailed close to the singular pore edge region and raises questions concerning the role of particle surface roughness. The relevance and robustness of such of a scenario for rough micrometer-sized latex particles is emphasized and comparisons are made with existing experimental data.