Related papers: The fluid running in the subnanochannel with funct…
The motion of a fluid induced by thermal gradients in the absence of driving forces is known as thermo-osmosis. The physical explanation of this phenomenon stems from the emergence of gradients in the tangential pressure due to the presence…
In molecular dynamics simulations, nanochannel flows are usually driven by a constant force, that aims to represent a pressure difference between inlet and outlet, and periodic boundary conditions are applied in the streamwise direction…
We demonstrate \textit{bendotaxis}, a novel mechanism for droplet self-transport at small scales. A combination of bending and capillarity in a thin channel causes a pressure gradient that, in turn, results in the spontaneous movement of a…
Gradients of voltage, pressure, temperature, and salinity can transport objects in micro- and nanofluidic systems by well known mechanisms. Here we report the discovery of a transport effect driven by viscosity gradients, which cause an…
Here we report a surface curvature-induced directional movement phenomenon, based on molecular dynamics simulations, that a nanoscale water droplet at the outer surface of a graphene cone always spontaneously moves toward the larger end of…
We study compressible fluid flow in narrow two-dimensional channels using a novel molecular dynamics simulation method. In the simulation area, an upstream source is maintained at constant density and temperature while a downstream…
Surface tension gradients induce Marangoni flow, which may be exploited for fluid transport. At the micrometer scale, these surface-driven flows can be more significant than those driven by pressure. By introducing fluid-fluid interfaces on…
This paper reports theoretical and numerical investigations on free molecular gas flows through micro-channels. Both diffusely and specularly reflective channel surfaces are considered. Gaskinetic methods are adopted to develop the…
Recent experiments on active materials, such as dense bacterial suspensions and microtubule-kinesin motor mixtures, show a promising potential for achieving self-sustained flows. However, to develop active microfluidics it is necessary to…
For a gas confined between surfaces held at different temperatures the velocity distribution shows a significant deviation from the Maxwell distribution when the mean free path of the molecules is comparable to or larger than the channel…
Experiments were performed to study the effects of surface wettability on flow boiling of water at atmospheric pressure. The test channel is a single rectangular channel 0.5 mm high, 5 mm wide and 180 mm long. The mass flux was set at 100…
We study the time evolution and driven motion of thin liquid films lying on top of chemical patterns on a substrate. Lattice-Boltzmann and molecular dynamics methods are used for simulations of the flow of microscopic and nanoscopic films,…
Collective transport through channels shows surprising properties under one-dimensional confinement: particles in a single file exhibit sub-diffusive behavior, while liquid confinement causes distance-independent correlations between the…
A range of technologies require the directed motion of nanoscale droplets on solid substrates. A way of realizing this effect is durotaxis, whereby a stiffness gradient of a substrate can induce directional motion without requiring an…
Making liquid droplets move spontaneously on solid surfaces is a key challenge in lab-on-chip and heat exchanger technologies. The best-known mechanism, a wettability gradient, does not generally move droplets rapidly enough and cannot…
We study a liquid-gas coexistence system in a container under gravity with heat flow in the direction opposite to gravity. By molecular dynamics simulation, we find that the liquid buoys up and continues to float steadily. The height at…
Droplet motion over a surface with wettability gradient has been simulated using molecular dynamics (MD) simulation to highlight the underlying physics. GROMACS and Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) were used for simulation and intermittent…
The classical fluid dynamics boundary condition of no-slip suggests that variation in the wettability of a solid should not affect the flow of an adjacent liquid. However experiments and molecular dynamics simulations indicate that this is…
We numerically study the dynamics of a passive fluid droplet confined within a microchannel whose walls are covered with a thin layer of active gel. The latter represents a fluid of extensile material modelling, for example, a suspension of…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to simulate the thermal properties of a model fluid containing nanoparticles (nanofluid). By modelling transient absorption experiments, we show that they provide a reliable determination of…