Journal
JOURNAL OF STATISTICAL MECHANICS-THEORY AND EXPERIMENT
Volume -, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/1742-5468/2009/06/P06007
Keywords
microfluidics and nanofluidics (theory); lattice Boltzmann methods; molecular dynamics
Categories
Funding
- Consorzio COMETA [PI2S2]
- Italian Ministry of Universities and Research (MIUR)
- consortium SCIRE
- INFLUS [NMP-031980 EC]
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We report on simulations of capillary filling of highly wetting fluids in nanochannels with and without obstacles. We use atomistic (molecular dynamics) and hydrokinetic (lattice Boltzmann; LB) approaches which indicate clear evidence of the formation of thin precursor films, moving ahead of the main capillary front. The dynamics of the precursor films is found to obey a square-root law like that obeyed by the main capillary front, z(2)(t) alpha t, although with a larger prefactor, which we find to take the same value for the different geometries (2D-3D) under inspection. The two methods show a quantitative agreement which indicates that the formation and propagation of thin precursors can be handled at a mesoscopic/hydrokinetic level. This can be considered as a validation of the LB method and opens the possibility of using hydrokinetic methods to explore space-time scales and complex geometries of direct experimental relevance. Then, the LB approach is used to study the fluid behaviour in a nanochannel when the precursor film encounters a square obstacle. A complete parametric analysis is performed which suggests that thin-film precursors may have an important influence on the efficiency of nanochannel-coating strategies.
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