Related papers: Microfluidic pump driven by anisotropic phoresis
We study the effect of a nearby planar wall on the propulsion of a spherical phoretic micro-swimmer driven by reactions on its surface. An asymmetric coverage of catalysts on its surface which absorb reactants and generate products gives…
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…
Augmenting the dispersion of a solute species remains a challenging topic in electroosmotically-actuated flows due to the inherent plug-like feature of its velocity profile. In this study, we improvise on electrothermal flow of viscoelastic…
Precise manipulation of fluids and objects on the micro scale is seldom a simple task, but nevertheless crucial for many applications in life sciences and chemical engineering. We present a microfluidic chip fabricated in silicon-glass,…
Long, shallow microchannels embedded in thick soft materials are widely used in microfluidic devices for lab-on-a-chip applications. However, the bulging effect caused by fluid--structure interactions between the internal viscous flow and…
We propose a novel molecular device that pumps heat against a thermal gradient. The system consists of a molecular element connecting two thermal reservoirs that are characterized by different spectral properties. The pumping action is…
Thermo-osmotic flows - flows generated in micro and nanofluidic systems by thermal gradients - could provide an alternative approach to harvest waste heat. However, such use would require massive thermo-osmotic flows, which are up to now…
We have developed and characterized two novel micro flow sensors based on measuring the electrical impedance of the interface between the flowing liquid and metallic electrodes embedded on the channel walls. These flow sensors are very…
We show both numerically and analytically that a chemically patterned active pore can act as a micro/nano-pump for fluids, even if it is fore-aft symmetric. This is possible due to a spontaneous symmetry breaking which occurs when advection…
Internal phoretic flows due to the interactions of solid boundaries with local chemical gradients may be created using chemical patterning. Alternatively, we demonstrate here that internal flows might also be induced by geometric…
Nonlinear electrokinetic phenomena, where electrically driven fluid flows depend nonlinearly on the applied voltage, are commonly encountered in aqueous suspensions of colloidal particles. A prime example is the induced-charge…
A wide spectrum of electrokinetic studies is modelled as isothermal ones to expedite analysis even when such conditions may be extremely difficult to realize in practice. As a clear and novel departure from this trend, we address the case…
Microchannel with porous wall has various microfluidic applications including iontophoresis, diagnostic devices, etc. In order to have an efficient and better design of such devices, exact quantification of velocity field in the…
An ion-exchange-resin-based microfluidic pump is introduced that utilizes trace amounts of ions to generate fluid flows. We show experimentally that our pump operates in almost deionized water for periods exceeding 24h and induces fluid…
The flow profile in a capillary gap and the pumping efficiency of an acoustic micropump employing Surface Acoustic Waves is investigated both experimentally and theoretically. Such ultrasonic surface waves on a piezoelectric substrate…
Nano-scale fluid transport has vast applications spanning from water desalination to biotechnology [1,2]. It is possible to pump fluids in nano-conduits using pressure gradients [3], thermal methods [4], electric [5,6] and magnetic fields…
Thermal gradients lead to macroscopic fluid motion if a confining surface is present along the gradient. This fundamental nonequilibrium effect, known as thermo-osmosis, is held responsible for particle thermophoresis in colloidal…
Acoustic microstreaming has several industrial, therapeutic, and biomedical applications - Acoustic cleaning, micromixing, microfluid transport, hemolysis, sonoporation. The acoustic microstreaming due to the oscillation of ultrasound…
A new type of water droplet transportation on microstructured hydrophobic surface is proposed and investigated experimentally and theoretically - water droplet could be driven by scale effect which is different from the traditional methods.…
Microbubbles excited by acoustic fields inside water oscillate, and generate acoustic radiation forces and drag-induced acoustic streaming. These forces can be harnessed in various biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery and…