Nanometer-thick lateral polyelectrolyte micropatterns induce macrosopic electro-osmotic chaotic fluid instabilities.

ABSTRACT: Electro-convective vortices in ion concentration polarization under shear flow have been of practical relevance for desalination processes using electrodialysis. The phenomenon has been scientifically disregarded for decades, but is recently embraced by a growing fluid dynamics community due its complex superposition of multi-scale gradients in electrochemical potential and space charge interacting with emerging complex fluid momentum gradients. While the visualization, quantification and fundamental understanding of the often-chaotic fluid dynamics is evolving rapidly due to sophisticated simulations and experimentation, little is known whether these instabilities can be induced and affected by chemical topological heterogeneity in surface properties. In this letter, we report that polyel

SUBMITTER: Wessling M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3944711 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature