Electrokinetic flow in the U-shaped micro-nanochannels

Abstract

U-shaped micro-nanochannels can generate significant flow disturbance as well as locally amplified electric field, which gives itself potential to be microfluidic mixers, electrokinetic pumps, and even cell lysis process. Numerical simulation is utilized in this work to study the hidden characteristics of the U-shaped micro-nanochannel system, and the effects of key controlling parameters (the external voltage and pressure) on the device output metrics (current, maximum values of electric field, shear stress and flow velocity) were evaluated. A large portion of current flowing through the whole system goes through the nanochannels, rather than the middle part of the microchannel, with its value increasing linearly with the increase of voltage. Due to the local ion depletion near micro-nanofluidic junction, significantly enhanced electric field (as much as 15 fold at V=1 V and P0=0) as well as strong shear stress (leading to electrokinetic flow) is generated. With increasing external pressure, both electric field and shear stress can be increased initially (due to shortening of depletion region length), but are suppressed eventually at higher pressure due to the destruction of ion depletion layer. Insights gained from this study could be useful for designing nonlinear electrokinetic pumps and other systems.