Diffusion enhancement in a levitated droplet via oscillatory deformation

Abstract

Recent experimental results indicate that mixing is enhanced by a reciprocal flow induced inside a levitated droplet with an oscillatory deformation [T. Watanabe et al. Sci. Rep. 8, 10221 (2018)]. Generally, reciprocal flow cannot convect the solutes in time average, and agitation cannot take place. In the present paper, we focus on the diffusion process coupled with the reciprocal flow. We theoretically derive that the diffusion process can be enhanced by the reciprocal flow, and the results are confirmed via numerical calculation of the over-damped Langevin equation with a reciprocal flow.