Bakli Chirodeep, Chakraborty Suman
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India.
Electrophoresis. 2015 Mar;36(5):675-81. doi: 10.1002/elps.201400317. Epub 2014 Nov 10.
We bring out a nontrivial coupling of the intrinsic wettability, surface charge, and electrokinetic energy conversion characteristics of nanofluidic devices. Our analyses demonstrate that nanofluidic energy conversion efficiencies may get amplified with increase in surface charge density, not perpetually, but only over a narrow regime of low surface charges, and may get significantly arrested to reach a plateau beyond a threshold surface charging condition, as attributed to a complex interplay between fluid structuration and ionic transport within a charged interfacial layer. We explain the corresponding findings from our molecular dynamics simulations with the aid of a simple modified continuum based theory. We attribute our findings to hitherto-unexplored four-way integration of surface charge, interfacial slip, ionic transport, and the water molecule structuration. The consequent complex nonlinear nature of the energy transfer characteristics may bear far-ranging scientific and technological implications toward design, synthesis, and operation of futuristic energy conversion devices of molecular length scales.
我们揭示了纳米流体装置的固有润湿性、表面电荷和动电能量转换特性之间的重要耦合关系。我们的分析表明，纳米流体能量转换效率可能会随着表面电荷密度的增加而提高，但不是一直如此，而是仅在低表面电荷的狭窄范围内，并且在超过阈值表面充电条件后，可能会显著停滞并达到平稳状态，这归因于带电界面层内流体结构和离子传输之间的复杂相互作用。我们借助基于简单修正连续介质的理论，解释了分子动力学模拟的相应结果。我们将研究结果归因于表面电荷、界面滑移、离子传输和水分子结构迄今未被探索的四向整合。能量传递特性随之而来的复杂非线性性质，可能对分子长度尺度的未来能量转换装置的设计、合成和运行具有广泛的科学和技术意义。
