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Hydrodynamics of thermally driven chiral suspensions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2023

E. Kirkinis*
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA Center for Computation and Theory of Soft Materials, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
A.V. Andreev
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
M. Olvera de la Cruz
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA Center for Computation and Theory of Soft Materials, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: kirkinis@northwestern.edu

Abstract

Considerable effort has been directed towards the characterization of chiral mesoscale structures, as shown in chiral protein assemblies and carbon nanotubes. Here, we establish a thermally driven hydrodynamic description for the actuation and separation of mesoscale chiral structures in a fluid medium. Cross-flow of a Newtonian liquid with a thermal gradient gives rise to an effective torque that propels each particle of a chiral suspension according to its handedness. In turn, the chiral suspension alters the liquid flow, which thus acquires a transverse (chiral) velocity component. Since observation of the predicted effects requires a low degree of sophistication, our work provides an efficient and inexpensive approach to test and calibrate chiral particle propulsion and separation strategies.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. A chiral velocity ${v}^{{ch}}\hat {\boldsymbol {z}}$ – defined as the difference of the velocities of the left- and right-handed particles, averaged over their number density (number of particles per unit volume) – of $n$ chiral particles suspended in a classical liquid is induced by a vertical temperature gradient $\boldsymbol {\nabla } T= \partial _y T\hat {\boldsymbol {y}}$ and shear flow $\boldsymbol {v} = u(y)\,\hat {\boldsymbol {x}}$ in a channel of width $d$. In a non-racemic suspension of chiral particles, the liquid is also perturbed by chirality and acquires a transverse velocity component $\delta v(y)\,\hat {\boldsymbol {z}}$ (not shown), perpendicular to the direction of the base flow $u(y)\, \hat {\boldsymbol {x}}$.

Figure 1

Table 1. Definitions and material parameter values (Fogel'son & Likhachev 2001).

Figure 2

Figure 2. Chiral particle velocity $v^{{ch}}$ in ${\rm cm}\ {\rm s}^{-1}$ from (4.6), perpendicular to the $x$–$y$ plane formed by a base Poiseuille flow and the vertical temperature gradient directions (cf. figure 1). Here, $y$ is the vertical channel coordinate in cm, and we employed the Arrhenius-type temperature dependent viscosity law (2.3) for a BM-4 oil (Fogel'son & Likhachev 2001). We have set $\chi =1$ (see the discussion in Appendix A).

Figure 3

Figure 3. Transverse chiral component of liquid velocity $\delta v$ in ${\rm cm}\ {\rm s}^{-1}$, perpendicular to the $x$–$y$ plane formed by a Poiseuille flow and the temperature gradient directions (cf. figure 1) and obtained by solution of (4.11) with boundary conditions (4.12). Here, $y$ is the vertical channel coordinate in cm, and we employed the Arrhenius-type temperature dependent viscosity law (2.3) for a BM-4 oil (Fogel'son & Likhachev 2001), giving rise to the skewness of chiral velocity profiles. We have set $\chi =1$ (see the discussion in Appendix A).

Figure 4

Figure 4. Distribution of the chiral stress $\sigma _{zy}^{{{ch}}}$ in (4.15) in ${\rm dynes}\ \textrm {cm}^{-2}$ imparted by the chiral suspension on the liquid in a direction perpendicular to the $x$–$y$ plane formed by the Poiseuille flow and the vertical temperature gradient (cf. figure 1), versus the vertical coordinate $y$ of the channel in cm. We employed the Arrhenius-type temperature-dependent viscosity law (2.3) for a BM-4 oil (Fogel'son & Likhachev 2001). Since the normal vectors to the two channel walls have opposite sign, the chiral suspension exerts on the walls two forces of opposite sign directed into and out of the page. Hence there is a screw torque exerted by the chiral flow on the confining walls, directed along the base flow direction. We have set $\chi =1$ (see the discussion in Appendix A).

Figure 5

Figure 5. Chiral particle velocity $v^{{ch}}$ in ${\rm cm}\ {\rm s}^{-1}$ from (5.3), perpendicular to the $x$–$y$ plane formed by the Couette flow and temperature gradient directions (cf. figure 1). Here, $y$ is the vertical channel coordinate in cm, and we employed the Arrhenius-type temperature-dependent viscosity law (2.3) for a BM-4 oil (Fogel'son & Likhachev 2001). The base flow is generated by the motion of the upper channel wall with velocity $1\ {\rm cm}\ {\rm s}^{-1}$. We have set $\chi =1$ (see the discussion in Appendix A).

Figure 6

Figure 6. Transverse chiral component of liquid velocity $\delta v$ in ${\rm cm}\ {\rm s}^{-1}$, perpendicular to the $x$–$y$ plane formed by the Couette flow and temperature gradient directions (cf. figure 1) by solving for $\delta v$ in (4.11) with boundary conditions (4.12), when the base flow is given by the Couette profile obtained from (5.1a,b) and (5.2a–d). Here, $y$ is the vertical channel coordinate in cm, and we employed the Arrhenius-type temperature-dependent viscosity law (2.3) for a BM-4 oil (Fogel'son & Likhachev 2001), giving rise to the skewness of the chiral velocity profiles. The base flow is generated by the motion of the upper channel wall with velocity $1\ {\rm cm}\ {\rm s}^{-1}$. We have set $\chi =1$ (see the discussion in Appendix A).

Figure 7

Figure 7. Chiral particle velocity $v^{{ch}}$ in ${\rm cm}\ {\rm s}^{-1}$ from (6.6), perpendicular to the $x$–$y$ plane formed by the motion of the upper wall with velocity $V=0.1 \ {\rm cm}\ {\rm s}^{-1}$. Most of the propulsion is generated at the interior, which is the location of increased temperature gradients due to viscous heating and thus of diminishing liquid viscosity. We have set $\chi =1$ (see the discussion in Appendix A).

Figure 8

Figure 8. (a) Paddle-like chiral particle employed in the single-particle theory based on the resistance matrix formulation (Makino & Doi 2004, 2017). Centre-to-centre distance is $2h$, and the radius of each disk is $a$. We take the characteristic size of the paddle-like chiral particle to be $h\sim R$, according to the notation introduced in the present paper. (b) Definition of the angle $\theta$ employed in the mobility tensor to characterize the degree of chirality of a single particle (Makino & Doi 2017); see (A1).