Transport and mixing by metachronal waves in nonreciprocal soft robotic pneumatic artificial cilia at low Reynolds numbers

Cilia are widely employed by living systems to manipulate fluid flow in various functions, such as feeding, pumping, and locomotion. Mimicking the intricate ciliary asymmetry combination with collective metachronal beating may find wide application transport mixing microfluidic systems. Here, we numerically analyze of pneumatic artificial cilia. We specifically address three aspects motion: (i) pumping backflow region, (ii) cilia (iii) transport—mixing transition region. Our results show that antiplectic metachrony leads highest efficiency rate two distinct regions, i.e., below above surface, respectively. motion strongly enhances diffusivity when advection is dominant at high Péclet numbers, a factor 3 for symplectic 4 synchronous beating. In addition, an increase 1.5 decrease 2.5 compared pumping. To investigate higher metachrony, develop simple two-cilia model demonstrate shielding between neighboring main reason rate.