A platform for stop-flow gradient generation to investigate chemotaxis

Zuyao Xiao; Audrey Nsamela; Benjamin Garlan; Juliane Simmchen

doi:10.1002/anie.202117768

A platform for stop-flow gradient generation to investigate chemotaxis

Zuyao Xiao, Audrey Nsamela, Benjamin Garlan, Juliane Simmchen^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Pure And Applied Chemistry

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

The ability of artificial microswimmers to respond to external stimuli and the mechanistical details of their origins belong to the most disputed challenges in interdisciplinary science. Therein, the creation of chemical gradients is technically challenging, because they quickly level out due to diffusion. Inspired by pivotal stopped flow experiments in chemical kinetics, we show that microfluidics gradient generation combined with a pressure feedback loop for precisely controlling the stop of the flows, can enable us to study mechanistical details of chemotaxis of artificial Janus micromotors, based on a catalytic reaction. We find that these copper Janus particles display a chemotactic motion along the concentration gradient in both, positive and negative direction and we demonstrate the mechanical reaction of the particles to unbalanced drag forces, explaining this behaviour.

Original language	English
Article number	e202117768
Number of pages	7
Journal	Angewandte Chemie - International Edition
Volume	61
Issue number	21
Early online date	24 Mar 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202117768
Publication status	Published - 16 May 2022

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska‐Curie grant agreement No 812780. J.S. and Z.X. acknowledge a Freigeist grant (no 91619) from the Volkswagen foundation and a Fulbright Cottrell Award, which partially supported this study. Z.X. acknowledges financial support from China Scholarship Council. All authors acknowledge fruitful discussions with Benjamin Friedrich and Mihail Popescu. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 812780. J.S. and Z.X. acknowledge a Freigeist grant (no 91619) from the Volkswagen foundation and a Fulbright Cottrell Award, which partially supported this study. Z.X. acknowledges financial support from China Scholarship Council. All authors acknowledge fruitful discussions with Benjamin Friedrich and Mihail Popescu. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

Keywords

artificial microswimmers
external stimuli
chemical gradients

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10.1002/anie.202117768Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

Xiao-etal-ACIE-2022-A-platform-for-stop-flow-gradient-generationFinal published version, 2.6 MBLicence: CC BY-NC 4.0

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A platform for stop-flow gradient generation to investigate chemotaxis

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