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Particle distribution and velocity in electrokinetically induced banding

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Abstract

Colloidal particles may be repelled from/attracted to the walls of glass micro-channels when an electro-osmotic flow is combined with a Poiseuille flow. Under certain conditions, the particles assemble into bands after accumulating near the walls (Cevheri and Yoda in Lab Chip 14(8):1391–1394, 2014). The fundamental physical mechanisms behind these phenomena remain unclear and up to now only measurements within \(1\,\upmu \hbox {m}\) of the walls have been available. In this work, we applied a 3D particle-tracking technique, astigmatism particle tracking velocimetry, to measure the concentration and velocity distribution of particles across the depth of the entire micro-channel. The experiments show that the particles are depleted in the bulk as they become concentrated near the bottom and top walls and this particle redistribution depends strongly upon the bulk particle concentration. The results suggest that bands form in a region where particles are practically immobile and their volume fraction increases at least an order of magnitude with respect to the original volume fraction. Our results suggest that particle accumulation and band formation near the walls may be triggered by forces generated in the bulk since the banding and particle accumulation extends at least a few \(\upmu \hbox {m}\) into the channel, or at length scales beyond the range of surface forces due to wall interactions.

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Notes

  1. Note that different shear rates could yield different particle distributions and therefore different forces. The value of such forces could in principle be obtained assuming that the particles are distributed following Boltzmann distributions. However, this implies that particles are in thermodynamic equilibrium, which is clearly not the case in our experiments. For that reason, we decide to restrict these studies to a single shear rate and explore the particle distribution in depth. Analysis and discussion on the effect of different shear rates can be found in recent publications (Yee and Yoda 2018).

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge financial support by the American National Science Foundation Fluid Dynamics Program (CBET-1235799) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (KA1808/12 and KA1808/22).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Aerodynamics, Bundeswehr University Munich, 85577, Neubiberg, Germany

    Massimiliano Rossi & Christian J. Kähler

  2. Physics of Fluids, University of Twente, 7522 NB, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Alvaro Marin

  3. G. W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332-0405, USA

    Necmettin Cevheri & Minami Yoda

Authors
  1. Massimiliano Rossi
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  2. Alvaro Marin
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  3. Necmettin Cevheri
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  4. Christian J. Kähler
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  5. Minami Yoda
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Correspondence to Massimiliano Rossi.

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Rossi, M., Marin, A., Cevheri, N. et al. Particle distribution and velocity in electrokinetically induced banding. Microfluid Nanofluid 23, 67 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-019-2227-9

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