Mixing and transport enhancement in microchannels by electrokinetic flows with charged surface heterogeneity

Abstract

Electrokinetic flow in a microchannel driven by charged surface heterogeneity in the presence of an external electric field is investigated by three-dimensional simulations. A computational framework is developed coupling a two-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann solver for the transport equations of fluids, charged species, and passive tracing scalars and a fast Poisson solver for the electric potential. The two-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann method is used to resolve the spatiotemporal distribution of flow field, ion concentration, and two passive tracing scalars. The fast Poisson solver is used to solve the electric potential at every time step. Three charged surface patterns together with various external electric fields are investigated. The induced electrokinetic vortices contribute to the mixing and transport enhancement of the passive scalars, depending on the surface patterns and the external electric field. The transport enhancement is found to follow a power law with respect to the magnitude of the external electric field.