title: Swarming behavior of gradient-responsive colloids with chemical signaling.
abstract: The article describes swarm dynamics of a system composed of colloidal particles that release chemical signals to navigate their peers toward the location of a static point target in two dimensions. The time evolution of the system is calculated by employing a combination of Brownian dynamics method for the particle motion and the diffusion problem for spatial transport of chemical signals, coupled via diffusiophoresis. A parametric study is performed with respect to crucial model parameters that control the diffusivity of the particles and the chemical signals. This includes the initial concentration of chemical signals carried by the particles, the chemical signal release rate, the diffusion coefficient of the chemical signals, the diffusiophoretic mobility of the particles, and the topological complexity of the surrounding environment. Three measures are used to evaluate the performance of the system: the target arrival time, the target localization success rate, and the target residence time. Since the particle motion is determined by the local concentration gradients of the chemical signals, parameter values that result in steep and durable concentration gradients lead to the best performance in navigating a swarm of colloidal particles toward the target. However, the results show that a trade-off principle exists, as it is not always possible to improve all the performance criteria simultaneously. For a topologically complex environment, the particles often become trapped in areas where the chemical signals accumulate, leading to a significant decrease in the localization success rate.
authors.affiliation: Chemical Robotics Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering, Institute of Chemical Technology, Technická 5, 166 28 Praha 6, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Grančič
authors.forename: František
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Štěpánek