Asymmetric boundary conditions and their relevance in minimal passive mass species transport in time-periodic electro-osmotic flows

A set of dimensionless groups along with constraints on their values are formulated to serve as an indication of the parametric combinations, leading to minimal enhancement of streamwise passive species transport in time-periodic electro-osmotic microchannel flows with asymmetric hydrodynamic slip and zeta potential boundaries. While the slip lengths and zeta potentials are mostly treated as uncoupled in the electrokinetic transport literature, we incorporate into the analysis wall surface charge/potential coupled apparent slip lengths and find that more than one minimal enhancement instances may be achieved during a zeta potential sweep, provided that the uncharged surface slip length ratio is large enough. (C) 2021 Author(s).

Automated summary

This study formulates a set of dimensionless groups and constraints on their values to indicate the parametric combinations in time-periodic electro-osmotic microchannel flows with asymmetric hydrodynamic slip. It is found that multiple minimal enhancement instances may be achieved during a zeta potential sweep.