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Updated: Nov 8, 2025

Preparation and 3D Tracking of Catalytic Swimming Devices
Published on: July 1, 2016
Regimes of motion of magnetocapillary swimmers
Alexander Sukhov1, Maxime Hubert2, Galien Grosjean3,4
1Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energy (IEK-11), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Fürther Straße 248, 90429, Nuremberg, Germany. a.sukhov@fz-juelich.de.
Abstract:
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.
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