Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2016
In this work, we study the lift force on spherical nanoparticles suspended in a shear flow of rarefied binary gas mixtures. Analytical formulae are developed using the gas kinetic theory by considering non-rigid-body intermolecular interactions between the particle and gas molecules. It has been shown that the lift force formulae can be reduced to those in pure gases. It is also found that the direction of the lift force on nanoparticles in binary gas mixtures can be changed by varying the temperature, gas–particle interaction and/or gas concentrations.