(552i) Studying the Orientation of a Janus Particle Near a Wall Under Varying Flow Conditions

Colloidal particles with directional interactions have been the subject of growing interest in the soft matter field. The interest stems from the potential that directional interactions might be a useful tool to engineer the self-assembly behavior or phase diagram in a dense system of particles. A simple way to achieve biased interactions between two particles and/or a particle and a wall, is to fabricate anisotropic particles such as Janus particles by creating a patch that covers 50% of the particle surface. In this context, motivated by the biased interaction between a Janus particle and a wall, we aim to study the impact of this interaction on the orientation of a Janus particle near a wall under varying flow conditions. We have experimentally fabricated Janus particles and studied their orientation near a wall with and without flow and observed different preferential orientation as a function of flow. In order to better understand the interaction between the particle and the wall and its impact on particle orientation, we will employ the Kern-Frankel model, which is frequently used in colloidal systems to describe the directional interaction between colloids and surfaces, in Brownian Dynamics simulations.