Abstract
A numerical investigation is performed on the electroosmotic flow (EOF) in a surface-modulated microchannel to induce enhanced solute mixing. The channel wall is modulated by placing surface-mounted obstacles of trigonometric shape along which the surface potential is considered to be different from the surface potential of the homogeneous part of the wall. The characteristics of the electrokinetic flow are governed by the Laplace equation for the distribution of external electric potential; the Poisson equation for the distribution of induced electric potential; the Nernst–Planck equations for the distribution of ions; and the Navier–Stokes equations for fluid flow simultaneously. These nonlinear coupled set of governing equations are solved numerically by a control volume method over the staggered system. The influence of the geometric modulation of the surface, surface potential heterogeneity and the bulk ionic concentration on the EOF is analyzed. Vortical flow develops near a surface modulation, and it becomes stronger when the surface potential of the modulated region is in opposite sign to the surface potential of the homogeneous part of the channel walls. Vortical flow also depends on the Debye length when the Debye length is in the order of the channel height. Pressure drop along the channel length is higher for a ribbed wall channel compared to the grooved wall case. The pressure drop decreases with the increase in the amplitude for a grooved channel, but increases for a ribbed channel. The mixing index is quantified through the standard deviation of the solute distribution. Our results show that mixing index is higher for the ribbed channel compared to the grooved channel with heterogeneous surface potential. The increase in potential heterogeneity in the modulated region also increases the mixing index in both grooved and ribbed channels. However, the mixing performance, which is the ratio of the mixing index to pressure drop, reduces with the rise in the surface potential heterogeneity.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Stone, H.A., Stroock, A.D., Ajdari, A.: Engineering flows in a small devices: microfluidics toward a lab-on-a-chip. Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech. 36, 381–411 (2004)
Chung, A.J., Kimb, D., Erickson, D.: Electrokinetic microfluidic devices for rapid, low power drug delivery in autonomous microsystems. Lab Chip 8, 330–338 (2008)
Bayraktar, T., Pidugu, S.B.: Characterization of liquid flows in microfluidic systems. Int. J. Heat Mass Transf. 49, 815–824 (2006)
Tian, F., Li, B., Kwok, D.Y.: Tradeoff between mixing and transport for electroosmotic flow in heterogeneous microchannels with nonuniform surface potentials. Langmuir 21, 1126–1131 (2005)
Wu, H.-Y., Liu, C.-H.: A novel electrokinetic micromixer. Sensor Actuators A Phys. 118, 107–115 (2005)
Ewinga, M.M., Thompsona, J.M., McLarena, R.S., Purperob, V.M., Thomasb, K.J., Dobrowskic, P.A., DeGrootc, G.A., Romsosd, E.L., Stortsa, D.R.: Human DNA quantification and sample quality assessment: developmental validation of the PowerQuant1 system. Forensic Sci. Int. Genet. 23, 166–177 (2016)
Srinivasan, V., Pamula, V.K., Fair, R.B.: An integrated digital microfluidic lab-on-a-chip for clinical diagnostics on human physiological fluids. Lab Chip 4, 310–315 (2004)
Probstein, R.F.: Physicochemical Hydrodynamics: An Introduction, 2nd edn. Wiley Interscience, New York (1994)
Conlisk, A.T., McFerran, J.: Mass transfer and flow in electrically charged micro-and nanochannels. Anal. Chem. 74, 2139–2150 (2002)
Sadr, R., Yoda, M., Zheng, Z., Conlisk, A.T.: An experimental study of electro-osmotic flow in rectangular microchannels. J. Fluid Mech. 506, 357–367 (2004)
Bhattacharyya, S., Zheng, M., Conlisk, A.T.: Electro-osmotic flow in two-dimensional charged micro- and nanochannels. J. Fluid Mech. 540, 247–267 (2005)
Park, H.M., Lee, J.S., Kim, T.W.: Comparison of the Nernst–Planck model and the Poisson–Boltzmann model for electroosmotic flows in microchannels. J. Colloid Interface Sci. 315, 731–739 (2007)
Haywood, D.G., Harms, Z.D., Jacobson, S.C.: Electroosmotic flow in nanofluidic channels. Anal. Chem. 86, 11174–11180 (2014)
Nguyen, N.-T., Wu, Z.: Micromixers—a review. J. Micromech. Microeng. 15, R1R16 (2005)
Du, Y., Zhang, Z., Yim, C., Lin, M., Cao, X.: A simplified design of the staggered herringbone micromixer for practical applications. Biomicrofluidics 4, 024105–024113 (2010)
Ajdari, A.: Electro-osmosis on inhomogeneously charged surfaces. Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 755–758 (1995)
Yariv, E.: Electro-osmotic flow near a surface charge discontinuity. J. Fluid Mech. 521, 181–189 (2004)
Lin, T.-Y., Chen, C.-L.: Analysis of electroosmotic flow with periodic electric and pressure fields via the lattice Poisson–Boltzmann method. Appl. Math. Model. 37, 2816–2829 (2013)
Tanga, G.H., Li, Z., Wang, J.K., He, Y.L., Tao, W.Q.: Electroosmotic flow and mixing in microchannels with the lattice Boltzmann method. J. Appl. Phys. 100, 094908–094918 (2006)
Jain, M., Nandakumar, K.: Optimal patterning of heterogeneous surface charge for improved electrokinetic micromixing. Comput. Chem. Eng. 49, 18–24 (2013)
Fang, Y., Ye, Y., Shen, R., Zhu, P., Guo, R., Hu, Y., Wu, L.: Mixing enhancement by simple periodic geometric features in microchannels. Chem. Eng. J. 187, 306–310 (2012)
Xu, Z., Yang, Y., Vadillo, D., Ruan, X., Fu, X.: A mathematical model of mixing enhancement in microfluidic channel with a constriction under periodic electro-osmotic flow. Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 041907–041912 (2012)
Stroock, A.D., Weck, M., Chiu, D.T., Huck, W.T.S., Kenis, P.J.A., Ismagilov, R.F., Whitesides, G.M.: Patterning electro-osmotic flow with patterned surface charge. Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 3314–3317 (2000)
Krishnamoorthy, S., Feng, J., Henry, A.C., Locascio, L.E., Hickman, J.J., Sundaram, S.: Simulation and experimental characterization of electroosmotic flow in surface modified channels. Microfluid. Nanofluid. 2, 345–355 (2006)
Lee, C.-Y., Lee, G.-B., Fu, L.-M., Lee, K.-H., Yang, R.-J.: Electrokinetically driven active micro-mixers utilizing zeta potential variation induced by field effect. J. Micromech. Microeng. 14, 1390–1398 (2004)
Wu, H.-Y., Liu, C.-H.: A novel electrokinetic micromixer. Sens. Actuators A Phys. 118, 107–115 (2005)
Biddiss, E., Erickson, D., Li, D.: Heterogeneous surface charge enhanced micromixing for electrokinetic flows. Anal. Chem. 76, 3208–3213 (2004)
Shu, Y.C., Chang, C.C., Chen, Y.S., Wang, C.Y.: Electro-osmotic flow in a wavy microchannel: coherence between the electric potential and the wall shape function. Phys. Fluids 22, 082001–082011 (2010)
Hu, Y., Werner, C., Li, D.: Influence of the three-dimensional heterogeneous roughness on electrokinetic transport in microchannels. J. Colloid Interface Sci. 280, 527–536 (2004)
Seo, H.-S., Kim, Y.-J.: A study on the mixing characteristics in a hybrid type microchannel with various obstacle configurations. Mater. Res. Bull. 47, 2948–2951 (2012)
Cho, C.-C., Chen, C.-L., Chen, C.-K.: Mixing enhancement of electrokinetically-driven non-Newtonian fluids in microchannel with patterned blocks. Chem. Eng. J. 191, 132–140 (2012)
Bhattacharyya, S., Bera, S.: Combined electroosmosis-pressure driven flow and mixing in a microchannel with surface heterogeneity. Appl. Math. Model. 39, 4337–4350 (2015)
Bhattacharyya, S., Bera, S.: Nonlinear electroosmosis pressure-driven flow in a wide microchannel with patchwise surface heterogeneity. J. Fluids Eng. Trans. ASME 135, 021303–0213015 (2013)
Leonard, B.P.: Stable and accurate convective modelling procedure based on quadratic upstream interpolation. Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng. 19, 59–98 (1979)
Fletcher, C.A.J.: Computational Techniques for Fluid Dynamics, Vol. I and II, Springer Ser. Comput. Phy. 2nd ed. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York (1991)
Mirbozorgi, S.A., Niazmand, H., Renkrizbulut, M.: Electroosmotic flow in reservoir-connected flat microchannels with non-uniform zeta potential. J. Fluid Eng. Trans. ASME 128, 1133–1143 (2006)
Fan, J., Ding, W., Zhang, J., He, Y., Tao, W.: A performance evaluation plot of enhanced heat transfer techniques oriented for energy-saving. Int. J. Heat Mass Transf. 52, 33–44 (2009)
Charun, H.: Heat transfer and pressure drop in a vertical tube with a nodular turbulizer. Appl. Therm. Eng. 28, 1984–1994 (2008)
Holvey, C.P., Roberge, D.M., Gottspone, M., Kockmann, N., Macchi, A.: Pressure drop and mixing in single phase microreactors: simplified designs of micromixers. Chem. Eng. Process Process Intensif. 50, 1069–1075 (2011)
Jaafarzadeh, N., Ghanbari, F., Ahmadi, M.: Efficient degradation of 2,4- dichlorophenoxyacetic acid by peroxymonosulfate/magnetic copper ferrite nanoparticles/ozone: a novel combination of advanced oxidation processes. Chem. Eng. J. 320, 436–447 (2017)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Communicated by S. Balachandar.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bera, S., Bhattacharyya, S. Effects of geometric modulation and surface potential heterogeneity on electrokinetic flow and solute transport in a microchannel. Theor. Comput. Fluid Dyn. 32, 201–214 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00162-017-0448-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00162-017-0448-7