Journal
ACS NANO
Volume 10, Issue 4, Pages 4637-4643Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b00939
Keywords
electroosmotic flow rectification; ion-current rectification; AC electroosmotic pump; nanofluidic diode; conical nanopore; high pressure
Categories
Funding
- Nanostructures for Electrical Energy Storage (NEES), an Energy Frontier Research Center - U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences [DESC0001160]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Electroosmotic flow (EOF) is used to pump solutions through microfluidic devices and capillary electrophoresis columns. We describe here an EOF pump based on membrane EOF rectification, an electrokinetic phenomenon we recently described. EOF rectification requires membranes with asymmetrically shaped pores, and conical pores in a polymeric membrane were used here. We show here that solution flow through the membrane can be achieved by applying a symmetrical sinusoidal voltage waveform across the membrane. This is possible because the alternating current (AC) carried by ions through the pore is rectified, and we previously showed that rectified currents yield EOF rectification. We have investigated the effect of both the magnitude and frequency of the voltage waveform on flow rate through the membrane, and we have measured the maximum operating pressure. Finally, we show that operating in AC mode offers potential advantages relative to conventional DC-mode EOF pumps.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available