Curved ratchets improve bacteria rectification in microfluidic devices

Phys Rev E. 2021 Jul;104(1-1):014602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.104.014602.

Abstract

We study how bacteria rectification in microfluidics devices can be optimized by performing experiments with eight ratchets of different shape and size. Results show that curved ratchets perform best and that their radius of curvature influences how well they perform, as it affects the time bacteria spend on the ratchet surface. We find that the optimal bacterial ratchet is a 60μm radius semicircle witch 15μm concavities. We also show that the angle at which bacteria leave the ratchets can play an important role in their efficiency. Lastly, we reproduce our experimental conditions in a simple numerical simulation to confirm our findings.