Issue 22, 2014

Tunable interactions between paramagnetic colloidal particles driven in a modulated ratchet potential

Abstract

We study experimentally and theoretically the interactions between paramagnetic particles dispersed in water and driven above the surface of a stripe patterned magnetic garnet film. An external rotating magnetic field modulates the stray field of the garnet film and generates a translating potential landscape which induces directed particle motion. By varying the ellipticity of the rotating field, we tune the inter-particle interactions from net repulsive to net attractive. For attractive interactions, we show that pairs of particles can approach each other and form stable doublets which afterwards travel along the modulated landscape at a constant mean speed. We measure the strength of the attractive force between the moving particles and propose an analytically tractable model that explains the observations and is in quantitative agreement with experiment.

Graphical abstract: Tunable interactions between paramagnetic colloidal particles driven in a modulated ratchet potential

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
17 Jan 2014
Accepted
14 Feb 2014
First published
14 Feb 2014

Soft Matter, 2014,10, 3915-3925

Tunable interactions between paramagnetic colloidal particles driven in a modulated ratchet potential

A. V. Straube and P. Tierno, Soft Matter, 2014, 10, 3915 DOI: 10.1039/C4SM00132J

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