Chiral Lemniscate Formation in Magnetic Field Controlled Topological Fluid Flows

High shear spinning top (ST) typhoon-like fluid flow in a rapidly rotating inclined tube within a vortex fluidic device (VFD) approaches homochirality throughout the liquid with toroids of bundled single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) twisted into stable chiral lemniscates (in the shape of Figure 8s), predominantly as the R-or S-structures, for the tube rotating clockwise (CW) or counterclockwise (CCW). However, this is impacted by the Earth's magnetic field (BE). Theory predicts 1–20 MPa pressure for their formation, with their absolute chirality determined from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) images. Thus, the resultant lemniscate structures establish the absolute chirality of the inner and outer components of the ST flow. These chiral flows and lemniscates can be flipped to the opposite chirality by changing the orientation of the tube relative to the inclination angle of BE, by moving the geographical location. Special conditions prevail where the tangential angle of the outer and inner flow of the ST becomes periodically aligned with BE, which respectively dramatically reduce the formation of toroids (and thus lemniscates) and formation of lemniscates from the toroids formed by the double-helical (DH) flow generated by side wall Coriolis forces and Faraday waves.

Keywords

asymmetric induction, chiral fluid flow, earth's magnetic field, single walled carbon nanotubes, thin film microfluidics, vortex fluids

Citation

Jellicoe M, Gardner Z, Alotaibi AEH, Shoemaker KE, Scott JM, Wang S, Alotaibi BM, Luo X, Chuah C, Gibson CT, He S, Vimalanathan K, Gascooke JR, Chen X, Rodger A, Huang H, Dalgarno SJ, Antunes E, Weiss GA, Li Q, Quinton JS, Raston CL. (2025). Chiral Lemniscate Formation in Magnetic Field Controlled Topological Fluid Flows. Small. Early View.

URI

https://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/72851

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