Unidirectional rotation of circles driven by chiral active particles

JM Chen and XL Zhou and LX Zhang, CHINESE PHYSICS B, 27, 118701 (2018).

DOI: 10.1088/1674-1056/27/11/118701

The dynamics of two-dimensional rigid circles filled with chiral active particles are investigated by employing the overdamped Langevin dynamics simulations. Unidirectional rotation of rigid circles is observed, and the rotational angular velocity (omega') relies mainly on the length (l), the number (n(B)), and tilt angle (gamma) of boards, and the angular velocity (omega) and area fraction (rho) of chiral active particles. There are optimum values for these parameters at which the average angular velocity of circle reaches its maximum. The center-of- mass mean square displacement for circles drops by about two orders of magnitude for large angular velocity omega of chiral active particles with oscillations in the short-time regime. Our work demonstrates that nanofabricated objects with suitable designs immersed in a bath of chiral active particles can extract and rectify energy in a unidirectional motion.

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