Electroosmotic Flow of Viscoelastic Fluid in a Nanochannel Connecting Two Reservoirs

Lanju Mei; Shizhi Qian

doi:10.3390/mi10110747

Electroosmotic Flow of Viscoelastic Fluid in a Nanochannel Connecting Two Reservoirs

Micromachines (Basel). 2019 Oct 31;10(11):747. doi: 10.3390/mi10110747.

Authors

Lanju Mei¹, Shizhi Qian²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Engineering and Aviation Sciences, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Princess Anne, MD 21853, USA. lmei@umes.edu.
² Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA. sqian@odu.edu.

Abstract

: Electroosmotic flow (EOF) of viscoelastic fluid with Linear Phan-Thien-Tanner (LPTT) constitutive model in a nanochannel connecting two reservoirs is numerically studied. For the first time, the influence of viscoelasticity on the EOF and the ionic conductance in the micro-nanofluidic interconnect system, with consideration of the electrical double layers (EDLs), is investigated. Regardless of the bulk salt concentration, significant enhancement of the flow rate is observed for viscoelastic fluid compared to the Newtonian fluid, due to the shear thinning effect. An increase in the ionic conductance of the nanochannel occurs for the viscoelastic fluid. The enhancement of the ionic conductance is significant under the overlapping EDLs condition.

Keywords: electrical double layer; electroosmotic flow; ionic conductance; nanofluidics; viscoelastic fluid.