A frictionless microswimmer

Abstract

We investigate the self-locomotion of an elongated microswimmer by virtue of the unidirectional tangential surface treadmilling. We show that the propulsion could be almost frictionless, as the microswimmer is propelled forward with the speed of the backward surface motion, i.e. it moves throughout an almost quiescent fluid. We investigate this swimming technique using the special spheroidal coordinates and also find an explicit closed-form optimal solution for a two-dimensional treadmiler via complex-variable techniques.