title: Effect of interfaces on the nearby Brownian motion.
abstract: Near-boundary Brownian motion is a classic hydrodynamic problem of great importance in a variety of fields, from biophysics to micro-/nanofluidics. However, owing to challenges in experimental measurements of near-boundary dynamics, the effect of interfaces on Brownian motion has remained elusive. Here we report a computational study of this effect using μs-long large-scale molecular dynamics simulations and our newly developed Green-Kubo relation for friction at the liquid-solid interface. Our computer experiment unambiguously reveals that the t(-3/2) long-time decay of the velocity autocorrelation function of a Brownian particle in bulk liquid is replaced by a t(-5/2) decay near a boundary. We discover a general breakdown of traditional no-slip boundary condition at short time scales and we show that this breakdown has a profound impact on the near-boundary Brownian motion. Our results demonstrate the potential of Brownian-particle-based micro-/nanosonar to probe the local wettability of liquid-solid interfaces.
authors.affiliation: Materials Science Program, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1595, USA.
authors.forename: Kai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Materials Science Program, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1595, USA.|Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Wisconsin, 1509 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1595, USA.
authors.forename: Izabela
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Szlufarska