The advent of autonomous self-propulsion has instigated research towards making colloidal machines that can deliver mechanical work in the form of transport, and other functions such as sensing and cleaning. While much progress has been made in the last 10 years on various mechanisms to generate self-propulsion, the ability to steer self-propelled colloidal devices has so far been much more limited. A critical barrier in increasing the impact of such motors is in directing their motion against the Brownian rotation, which randomizes particle orientations. In this context, here we report directed motion of a specific class of catalytic motors when moving in close proximity to solid surfaces. This is achieved through active quenching of their Brownian rotation by constraining it in a rotational well, caused not by equilibrium, but by hydrodynamic effects. We demonstrate how combining these geometric constraints can be utilized to steer these active colloids along arbitrary trajectories.

Fluid transport that is driven by gradients of pressure, gravity, or electro-magnetic potential is well-known and studied in many fields. A subtler type of transport, called diffusiophoresis, occurs in a gradient of chemical concentration, either electrolyte or non-electrolyte. Diffusiophoresis works by driving a slip velocity at the fluid-solid interface. Although the mechanism is well-known, the diffusiophoresis mechanism is often considered to be an esoteric laboratory phenomenon. However, in this article we show that concentration gradients can develop in a surprisingly wide variety of physical phenomena - imposed gradients, asymmetric reactions, dissolution, crystallization, evaporation, mixing, sedimentation, and others - so that diffusiophoresis is in fact a very common transport mechanism, in both natural and artificial systems. We anticipate that in georeservoir extractions, physiological systems, drying operations, laboratory and industrial separations, crystallization operations, membrane processes, and many other situations, diffusiophoresis is already occurring - often without being recognized - and that opportunities exist for designing this transport to great advantage.

The zeta potential of a particle characterizes its motion in an electric field and is often thought to be negligible at high ionic strength (several moles per liter) due to thinning of the electrical double layer (EDL). Here, we describe zeta potential measurements on polystyrene latex (PSL) particles at monovalent salt concentrations up to saturation (∼5 M NaCl) using electrophoresis in sinusoidal electric fields and high-speed video microscopy. Our measurements reveal that the zeta potential remains finite at even the highest concentrations. Moreover, we find that the zeta potentials of sulfated PSL particles continue to obey the classical Gouy-Chapman model up to saturation despite significant violations in the model's underlying assumptions. By contrast, amidine-functionalized PSL particles exhibit qualitatively different behaviors such as zero zeta potentials at high concentrations of NaCl and KCl and even charge inversion in KBr solutions. The experimental results are reproduced and explained by Monte Carlo simulations of a simple lattice model of the EDL that accounts for effects due to ion size and ion-ion correlations. At high salt conditions, the model suggests that quantitative changes in the magnitude of surface charge can result in qualitative changes in the zeta potential-most notably, charge inversion of highly charged surfaces. These findings have important implications for electrokinetic phenomena such as diffusiophoresis within salty environments such as oceans, geological reservoirs, and living organisms.