Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
Volume 105, Issue 14, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.144503
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Funding
- U.S. Department of Energy through the Los Alamos National Laboratory/UCSB Institute for Multiscale Materials Studies
- NSF [CBET-0645097]
- UCSB-ARO Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies
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We show that nanoscale surface roughness, which commonly occurs on microfabricated metal electrodes, can significantly suppress electro-osmotic flows when excess surface conductivity is appreciable. We demonstrate the physical mechanism for electro-osmotic flow suppression due to surface curvature, compute the effects of varying surface conductivity and roughness amplitudes on the slip velocities of a model system, and identify scalings for flow suppression in different regimes of surface conduction. We suggest that roughness may be one factor that contributes to large discrepancies observed between classical electrokinetic theory and modern microfluidic experiments.
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