Alessandro Magazzù – Page 3

Microscopic Critical Engine featured in APS Physics

Our recent article Microscopic engine powered by critical remixing
by Falko Schmidt, Alessandro Magazzù, Agnese Callegari, Luca Biancofiore, Frank Cichos & Giovanni Volpe, published in Physical Review Letters 120(6), 068004 (2018) has been featured in “Focus: A Tiny Engine Powered by Light and Liquid Physics”, Physics 11, 16 (February 9, 2018)

Physics provides daily online-only news and commentary about a selection of papers from the APS journals collection. It is aimed at the reader who wants to keep up with highlights of physics research with explanations that don’t rely on complex technical detail.

The category Physics: focus stories features only a few number of articles each week selected among the set of articles published on all the APS journals.
Research articles that have an interdisciplinary character are usually selected, and their explanations are geared toward students and non-experts. Features are written by a journalist for an audience with a general interest in physics.

Microscopic Critical Engine published in Phys. Rev. Lett.

Microscopic engine powered by critical demixing
Falko Schmidt, Alessandro Magazzù, Agnese Callegari, Luca Biancofiore, Frank Cichos & Giovanni Volpe
Physical Review Letters 120(6), 068004 (2018)
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.068004
arXiv: 1705.03317

We experimentally demonstrate a microscopic engine powered by the local reversible demixing of a critical mixture. We show that, when an absorbing microsphere is optically trapped by a focused laser beam in a sub-critical mixture, it is set into rotation around the optical axis of the beam because of the emergence of diffusiophoretic propulsion. This behavior can be controlled by adjusting the optical power, the temperature, and the criticality of the mixture.

Featured in :
“Focus: A Tiny Engine Powered by Light and Liquid Physics”, Physics 11, 16 (February 9, 2018)
“Laser + Critical Liquid = Micro-Engine”, Optics & Photonics News (February 12, 2018)
“Tiny engine powered by demixing fluid” Phys.Org (February 12, 2018)
“Расслаивание растворителя закрутило микрочастицы вокруг лазерного пучка”, N+1: научные статьи, новости, открытия (February 12, 2018)
“Tiny engine powered by remixing fluid”, Brinkwire (February 16, 2018)

Alessandro Magazzù joins the Soft Matter Lab

Alessandro Magazzù from the University of Messina, Italy, joined the Soft Matter Lab on 1 July 2015 as a postdoctoral researcher.

His PhD thesis, “Optical trapping and thermal dynamics of Silicon nanowire”, deals with experimental work on various aspects of optical trapping and manipulation of non-spherical object and, in particular, nanowires.

At the Soft Matter Lab, he will work on a project related to the study of critical Casimir forces.