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Anomalous tumbling of colloidal ellipsoids in Poiseuille flows
Lauren E Altman1,2, Andrew D Hollingsworth1, David G Grier1
1Department of Physics and Center for Soft Matter Research, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA.
Abstract:
Shear flows cause aspherical colloidal particles to tumble so that their orientations trace out complex trajectories known as Jeffery orbits. The Jeffery orbit of a prolate ellipsoid is predicted to align the particle's principal axis preferentially in the plane transverse to the axis of shear. Holographic microscopy measurements reveal instead that colloidal ellipsoids' trajectories in Poiseuille flows strongly favor an orientation inclined by roughly π/8 relative to this plane. This anomalous observation is consistent with at least two previous reports of colloidal rods and dimers of colloidal spheres in Poiseuille flow and therefore appears to be a generic, yet unexplained feature of colloidal transport at low Reynolds numbers.
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