Confinement of surface spinners in liquid metamaterials

We show that rotating particles at the liquid–gas interface can be efficiently manipulated using the surface-wave analogue of optical lattices. Two orthogonal standing waves generate surface flows of counter-rotating half-wavelength unit cells, the liquid interface metamaterial, whose geometry is controlled by the wave phase shift. Here we demonstrate that by placing active magnetic spinners inside such metamaterials, one makes a powerful tool which allows manipulation and self-assembly of spinners, turning them into vehicles capable of transporting matter and information between autonomous metamaterial unit cells. We discuss forces acting on a spinner carried by a nonuniform flow and show how the forces confine spinners to orbit inside the same-sign vortex cells of the wave-driven flow. Reversing the spin, we move the spinner into an adjacent cell. By changing the spinning frequency or the wave amplitude, one can precisely control the spinner orbit. Multiple spinners within a unit cell self-organize into stable patterns, e.g., triangles or squares, orbiting around the center of the cell. Spinners having different frequencies can also be confined, such that the higher-frequency spinner occupies the inner orbit and the lower-frequency one circles on the outer orbit, while the orbital motions of both spinners are synchronized.