English

Thermocharge of a hot spot in an electrolyte solution

Soft Condensed Matter 2014-01-30 v1

Abstract

We discuss the thermoelectric properties of a locally heated micron-size volume in an electrolyte solution. We find that such a hot spot carries a net charge Q which, for an excess temperature of 10 K, may attain hundreds of elementary charges. The corresponding Seebeck electric field E increases linearly with the radius r inside the heated area, then goes through a maximum, and decays as 1/r2 at larger distances. Our results could be relevant to optothermal actuation of electrolytes and colloidal suspensions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1401.7493,
  title  = {Thermocharge of a hot spot in an electrolyte solution},
  author = {Arghya Majee and Alois Wüurger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.7493},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

10 pages, 5 figures