Active and Passive Transport at Interfaces
In this thesis we studied different forms of transport at interfaces. Four different interfacial transport mechanisms have been investigated. In each of them one physical aspect of active and passive transport is discussed. The four systems are arranged and discussed in four separate chapters. In chapter 3 and 4 we study the effect of static or hydrodynamic interactions on the cross over from individual diffusion towards collective diffusion. In chapter 3 the diffusion of circular domains on a giant unilamellar vesicle is measured. By tracking the motion of hydrodynamic interacting domains on a curved membrane we determined whether it is possible to extract rheological properties of the bilayer membrane. A similar two dimensional system interacting via static dipole interactions is studied in chapter 4. A mixture of paramagnetic and nonmagnetic colloidal particles immersed into a diluted ferrofluid is self assembled into colloidal flowers. In this experiment the effect of static interactions on the modes of diffusion of the petals of the colloidal flower is investigated in a one dimensional system. The results are compared with the single file diffusion of a hard core interacting one dimensional system. In chapter 5, the effect of actively directing particles with fluctuating active forces in a symmetry broken environment is studied. We address the question how to competing symmetry breaking effects decide on the direction of motion. The system consists of paramagnetic colloidal particles placed into an aqueous solution above the liquid-solid interface of a magnetic garnet film. An external modulated field supplies the fluctuations and the symmetry is broken by tilting the external field with respect to the magnetic film and/or by a magnetic symmetry broken pattern of the magnetic film. The direction of motion of the paramagnetic colloids is measured and we give a theoretical explanation of why which symmetry breaking wins. The fluidization of a two dimensional solid to a two dimensional liquid via the yielding of the monolayer is studied in chapter 6. The monolayer is locally yielded with thermo capillary interactions by focusing a laser onto it. We investigate the yielding as a function of the chemical nature of the monolayer and determine the thermodynamic requirements necessary for thermo capillary yielding.
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