Designing self-phoretic colloids and active swimmers*

The emerging field of powering at nanoscale began around 2004 with the discovery of self-phoretic swimmers such as electrocatalytic bimetallic nanomotors. While the field is still in its infancy, the last decade has witnessed a remarkable progress in designing different kinds of nanomotors. These autonomous movers typically harvest energy from their environment to sustain their deterministic locomotion. Within a unified formulation, encompassing self-electrophoresis, self-diffusiophoresis, and self-thermophoresis, generic performance characteristics of self-phoretic particles as a function of geometrical design --- particle shape and source/sink distribution --- are studied within the family of spheroids, both oblate and prolate.