Complex plasma with active Janus particles in patterned confinement

Kurzfassung

Active matter is a system of self-propelling units which convert the energy stored locally or extracted from their environment into directed motion. It has recently attracted considerable attention due to the rich new physics it displays and potential applications in various fields including materials science. An interesting instance of active matter is a suspension of active particles (e.g., the so-called Janus particles, where the two halves have different properties) in a gas discharge plasma. In this presentation, we report on the experiments with active Janus particles confined within the plasma sheath over a patterned electrode and analyze how the chiral characteristics of the particle trajectories couple with chiral features in the particle confinement landscape. We analysed the apparently chaotic flow of Janus particles and tested whether rectification of active motion, i.e., unidirectional drift of active particles, or their sorting or separation based on the self-propulsion characteristics can be achieved in this configuration.