Manipulating and powering colloids with a pinch of salt.

Par Cécile Cottin-Bizonne, Institut Lumière Matière, Lyon

le mardi 17 Juin à 14h, Salle des séminaires 3ème étage bâtiment A4

Diffusiophoresis is an interfacially driven transport phenomenon, leading to the motion of macro-molecules under solute gradients. Physically this phenomenon results from osmotic driving forces located within a nanometric diffuse interface at the boundary of the particles. It is an efficient but  rather unexplored mean to drive and manipulate particles. In this talk, I will first present experiments exploring the potentialities offered by this phenomenon. Then I will show how this energy transduction mechanism can be used to device self-propelled particles, which opens the possibility to explore the individual and collective motion of driven particles in an intrinsically out-of-equilibrium situation.