Electroosmotic Flow in Hydrophobic Microchannels of General Cross Section

Abstract

Adopting the Navier slip conditions, we analyze the fully developed electroosmotic flow in hydrophobic microducts of general cross section under the Debye–Hückel approximation. The method of analysis includes series solutions which their coefficients are obtained by applying the wall boundary conditions using the least-squares matching method. Although the procedure is general enough to be applied to almost any arbitrary cross section, eight microgeometries including trapezoidal, double-trapezoidal, isosceles triangular, rhombic, elliptical, semi-elliptical, rectangular, and isotropically etched profiles are selected for presentation. We find that the flow rate is a linear increasing function of the slip length with thinner electric double layers (EDLs) providing higher slip effects. We also discover that, unlike the no-slip conditions, there is not a limit for the electroosmotic velocity when EDL extent is reduced. In fact, utilizing an analysis valid for very thin EDLs, it is shown that the maximum electroosmotic velocity in the presence of surface hydrophobicity is by a factor of slip length to Debye length higher than the Helmholtz–Smoluchowski velocity. This approximate procedure also provides an expression for the flow rate which is almost exact when the ratio of the channel hydraulic diameter to the Debye length is equal to or higher than 50.