Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 17: Microswimmers II (Joint Session DY/BP)

BP 17.2: Talk

Tuesday, March 21, 2017, 14:45–15:00, HÜL 186

Chemotaxis and auto-chemotaxis of self-propelling droplets — Chenyu Jin, Carsten Krüger, and •Corinna Maass — MPI for Dynamics and Self Organization, Göttingen

Chemotaxis and auto-chemotaxis are key mechanisms in the dynamics of micro-organisms. However, chemical signalling and the natural environment of biological swimmers are generally complex, making them hard to access analytically. Simple artificial systems showing biomimetic features can provide vital insights. We present self-propelling droplet swimmers with both chemotactic and autochemotactic properties, as well as microfluidic assays to study them quantitatively and reproducibly.

We demonstrate chemotaxis by guiding droplets through mazes in the presence of a chemical gradient.

To study auto-chemotaxis, we let swimmers pass through bifurcating microfluidic channels and record anticorrelations between the branch choices of consecutive droplets. We present an analytical model balancing a Brownian process versus a diffusion-governed gradient force able to explain our experimental findings.