Issue 47, 2017

Van't Hoff's law for active suspensions: the role of the solvent chemical potential

Abstract

We extend Van’t Hoff's law for the osmotic pressure to a suspension of active Brownian particles. The propelled particles exert a net reaction force on the solvent, and thereby either drive a measurable solvent flow from the connecting solvent reservoir through the semipermeable membrane, or increase the osmotic pressure and cause the suspension to rise to heights as large as micrometers for experimentally realized microswimmers described in the literature. The increase in osmotic pressure is caused by the background solvent being, in contrast to passive suspensions, no longer at the chemical potential of the solvent reservoir. The difference in solvent chemical potentials depends on the colloid–membrane interaction potential, which implies that the osmotic pressure is a state function of a state that itself is influenced by the membrane potential.

Graphical abstract: Van't Hoff's law for active suspensions: the role of the solvent chemical potential

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
19 Jul 2017
Accepted
10 Nov 2017
First published
10 Nov 2017

Soft Matter, 2017,13, 8957-8963

Van't Hoff's law for active suspensions: the role of the solvent chemical potential

J. Rodenburg, M. Dijkstra and R. van Roij, Soft Matter, 2017, 13, 8957 DOI: 10.1039/C7SM01432E

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