Effect of curvature on the diffusion of colloidal bananas Ulbrich, Justin-Aurel Fernández-Rico, Carla Rost, Brian Vialetto, Jacopo Isa, Lucio Urbach, Jeffrey S. Dullens, Roel P. A. ddc:530 Anisotropic colloidal particles exhibit complex dynamics which play a crucial role in their functionality, transport, and phase behavior. In this Letter, we investigate the two-dimensional diffusion of smoothly curved colloidal rods—also known as colloidal bananas—as a function of their opening angle α. We measure the translational and rotational diffusion coefficients of the particles with opening angles ranging from 0◦ (straight rods) to nearly 360◦(closed rings). In particular, we find that the anisotropic diffusion of the particles varies nonmonotonically with their opening angle and that the axis of fastest diffusion switches from the long to the short axis of the particles when α> 180◦. We also find that the rotational diffusion coefficient of nearly closed rings is approximately an order of magnitude higher than that of straight rods of the same length. Finally, we show that the experimental results are consistent with slender body theory, indicating that the dynamical behavior of the particles arises primarily from their local drag anisotropy. These results highlight the impact of curvature on the Brownian motion of elongated colloidal particles, which must be taken into account when seeking to understand the behavior of curved colloidal particles. American Physical Society 2023 info:eu-repo/semantics/article doc-type:article text http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501 https://research-explorer.ista.ac.at/record/22212 Ulbrich J-A, Fernández-Rico C, Rost B, et al. Effect of curvature on the diffusion of colloidal bananas. <i>Physical Review E</i>. 2023;107(4). doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/physreve.107.l042602">10.1103/physreve.107.l042602</a> eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1103/physreve.107.l042602 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/issn/2470-0045 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/e-issn/2470-0053 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/arxiv/2211.07274 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess