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Biomedical subjects

Michael Urbakh

Publications and source records attributed to Michael Urbakh.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

Electrowetting with electrolytes.

A theory of electrowetting is developed for systems containing an interface between two immiscible electrolytic solutions. Laws for the dependence of contact angle on electrode potential are presented. Ionic impermeability of the liquid-liquid interface and nonlinear double-layer responses rationalize observed phenomena such as contact-angle saturation and droplet contraction or detachment. The theoretical results can be applied to design new, precisely controllable microfluidic devices.

Journal Article↗

The nonlinear nature of friction.

Tribology is the study of adhesion, friction, lubrication and wear of surfaces in relative motion. It remains as important today as it was in ancient times, arising in the fields of physics, chemistry, geology, biology and engineering. The more we learn about tribology the more complex it appears. Nevertheless, recent experiments coupled to theoretical modelling have made great advances in unifying apparently diverse phenomena and revealed many subtle and often non-intuitive aspects of matter in motion, which stem from the nonlinear nature of the problem.

Animals↗

Influence of roughness on the admittance of the quartz crystal microbalance immersed in liquids.

The effect of surface roughness on the response of the QCM has been considered, both theoretically and experimentally. A new theoretical approach to the description of the effect of roughness on the response of the QCM is proposed that accounts for the multiscale nature of roughness. Performing experiments in liquids having a wide range of viscosity and density made it possible to understand, for the first time, what characteristics of roughness influence the QCM experiments. The most important conclusion of the current study is that, to understand the experimental data, one has to take into account at least two types of roughness: slight and strong. We found that measurements of the frequency shift observed are not sufficient for the interpretations of the experimental data observed, and a full analysis of the impedance spectrum is called for.

Journal Article↗

Hopping motion of interacting particles: from time-dependent interaction to directed transport.

The hopping motion of three or more pairwise interacting particles on a linear equipotential chain is investigated. It is shown that a directed transport of the particle array can be obtained by introducing time-dependent interactions such as switching the interaction strength periodically between two values. The direction and mean velocity of the motion are determined by the nature of the imposed time dependence and can, hence, be chosen dynamically. The possibility of transporting a passive cargo and some other applications are discussed.

Journal Article↗