Characterization of Nonequilibrium Interactions of Catalytic Microswimmers Using Phoretically Responsive Nanotracers

Catalytic microswimmers convert the chemical energy from fuel into motion. They sustain chemical gradients and fluid flows that propel them by phoresis. This leads to unconventional behavior and collective dynamics, such as self-organization into complex structures. Characterizing the nonequilibrium interactions of microswimmers is crucial for advancing our understanding of active systems. However, this remains a challenge owing to the importance of fluctuations at the microscale and the difficulty in disentangling the different contributions to the interactions. Here, we show a massive dependence of the nonequilibrium interactions on the shape of catalytic microswimmers. We perform tracking experiments at high throughput to map interactions between nanocolloidal tracers and dimeric microswimmers of various aspect ratios. Our method leverages dual tracers with differing phoretic mobilities to quantitatively disentangle phoretic motion from hydrodynamic advection. This approach is validated through experiments on single chemically active sites and on immobilized catalytic microswimmers. We further investigate the activity-driven interactions of free microswimmers and directly measure their phoretic interactions. When compared to standard models, our findings highlight the important role of osmotic flows for microswimmers near surfaces and reveal an enhanced contribution of hydrodynamic advection relative to phoretic motion as the size of the microswimmer increases. Our study provides robust measurements of the nonequilibrium interactions from catalytic microswimmers and lays the groundwork for a realistic description of active systems.