Chemotaxis of Nonbiological Colloidal Rods
Abstract
Chemotaxis is the movement of organisms toward or away from a chemical attractant or toxin by a biased random walk process. Here we describe the first experimental example of chemotaxis outside biological systems. Platinum-gold rods 2.0μm long exhibit directed movement toward higher hydrogen peroxide concentrations through “active diffusion.” Brownian dynamics simulations reveal that no “temporal sensing” algorithm, commonly attributed to bacteria, is necessary; rather, the observed chemotaxis can be explained by random walk physics in a gradient of the active diffusion coefficient.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- October 2007
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.178103
- Bibcode:
- 2007PhRvL..99q8103H
- Keywords:
-
- 87.17.Jj;
- 82.45.Yz;
- 82.65.+r;
- Cell locomotion;
- chemotaxis and related directed motion;
- Nanostructured materials in electrochemistry;
- Surface and interface chemistry;
- heterogeneous catalysis at surfaces