Electrokinetic and Electroconvective Effects in Ternary Electrolyte Near Ion-Selective Microsphere.

The paper presents theoretical and experimental investigations of the behavior of an electrolyte solution with three types of ions near an ion-selective microparticle with electrokinetically and pressure-driven flow. A special experimental cell has been developed for the investigations. An anion-selective spherical particle composed of ion-exchange resin is fixed in the center of the cell.

Overlimiting current due to electro-diffusive amplification of the second Wien effect at a cation-anion bipolar membrane junction.

Numerical simulations are presented for the transient and steady-state response of a model electrodiffusive cell with a bipolar ion-selective membrane under electric current. The model uses a continuum Poisson-Nernst-Planck theory including source terms to account for the catalytic second Wien effect between ionogenic groups in the membranes and resolves the Debye layers at interfaces. The resulting electric field at the membrane junction is increased by as much as four orders of magnitude in comparison to the field external to the membrane.

Stability of two layers dielectric-electrolyte microflow subjected to an alternating external electric field.

The stability of the electroosmotic flow of the two-phase system electrolyte-dielectric with a free interface in the microchannel under an external electric field is examined theoretically. The mathematical model includes the Nernst-Plank equations for the ion concentrations. The linear stability of the 1D nonstationary solution with respect to the small, periodic perturbations along the channel, is studied.

On two-liquid AC electroosmotic system for thin films.

Lab-on-chip devices employ EOF for transportation and mixing of liquids. However, when a steady (DC) electric field is applied to the liquids, there are undesirable effects such as degradation of sample, electrolysis, bubble formation, etc. due to large magnitude of electric potential required to generate the flow.

Electrokinetic instability in microchannels.

The effect of geometric confinement on electroconvective instability due to nonequilibrium electro-osmotic slip at the interface of an electrolytic fluid and charge-selective solid is studied. It is shown that the topology of the marginal stability curves and the behavior of the critical parameters depend strongly on both channel geometry and dimensionless Debye length at low voltages for sufficiently deep channels, corresponding to the Rubinstein-Zaltzman instability mechanism, but that stability is governed almost entirely by channel depth for narrow channels at higher voltages. For shallow channels, it is shown that above a transition threshold, determined by both channel depth and Debye length, the low-voltage instability is completely suppressed.

Self-organization of two-dimensional waves in an active dispersive-dissipative nonlinear medium.

We consider the pattern-formation dynamics of a two-dimensional (2D) nonlinear evolution equation that includes the effects of instability, dissipation, and dispersion. We construct 2D stationary solitary pulse solutions of this equation, and we develop a coherent structures theory that describes the weak interaction of these pulses. We show that in the strongly dispersive case, 2D pulses organize themselves into V shapes.