Analysis of micro-fluidic tweezers in the Stokes regime

Abstract

Nanowire fluidic tweezers have been developed to gently and accurately capture, manipulate, and deliver micro objects. The mechanism behind the capture and release process has not yet been well explained. Utilizing the method of regularized Stokeslet, we study a cylindrical nanowire tumbling and interacting with spherical particles in the Stokes regime. The capture phenomenon observed in experiments is reproduced and illustrated with the trajectories of micro-spheres and fluid tracers. The flow structure and the region of capture are quantitatively examined and compared for different sizes of particles, various tumbling rates, and dimensions of the tweezers. We find that pure kinematic effects can explain the mechanism of capture and transport of particles. We further reveal the relation between the capture region and stagnation points in the displacement field, i.e., the displacement for tracer particles in the moving frame within one rotation of the wire.