Streaming potential of superhydrophobic microchannels.

For the purpose of gaining larger streaming potential, it has been suggested to employ superhydrophobic microchannels with a large velocity slip. There are two kinds of superhydrophobic surfaces, one having a smooth wall with a large Navier slip coefficient caused by the hydrophobicity of the wall material, and the other having a periodic array of no- shear slots of air pockets embedded in a nonslip wall. The electrokinetic flows over these two superhydrophobic surfaces are modelled using the Navier-Stokes equation and convection-diffusion equations of the ionic species.

Electrophoresis of particles with Navier velocity slip.

In the present investigation, it is found that the electrophoretic mobility of hydrophobic particles is affected not only by the zeta potential but also by the velocity slip at the particle surface. From a physicochemical viewpoint, zeta potential represents the surface charge properties and the slip coefficient indicates the hydrophobicity of the particle surface. Thus, it is necessary to separate the contribution of zeta potential from that of slip coefficient to the particle mobility, since zeta potential can be changed by varying the bulk ionic concentration while the slip coefficient can be modified by adjusting surfactant concentration.

Determination of the Navier slip coefficient of microchannels exploiting the streaming potential.

For most microchannels made of hydrophobic materials such as polymers, velocity slip occurs at the wall, affecting volumetric flow rate of electroosmotic flow Q(eof) and streaming potential (∂ϕ(str)/∂z). Since most techniques exploit Q(eof) or (∂ϕ(str)/∂z) to determine the zeta potential, ζ, it is very difficult to measure ζ of hydrophobic walls, if the slip coefficient b is not found a priori. Until now, Q(eof) and (∂ϕ(str)/∂z) are known to depend on ζ and b in a same functional form, which makes it impossible to estimate ζ or b separately using measurements of Q(eof) and (∂ϕ(str)/∂z).

Estimation of inhomogeneous zeta potential using velocity measurements of EOF.

We have developed a method of estimating the zeta potential distribution along the microchannel wall using velocity measurements of the EOF. The relevant inverse problem is solved through the minimization of a performance function utilizing the conjugate gradient method. Employing a set of simulated velocity measurements, which is constructed by adding random noise to the computed exact velocity, the present method is found to estimate the distribution of the zeta potential along the channel wall with reasonable accuracy.