Issue 18, 2010

An automated, high-throughput experimental system for induced charge electrokinetics

Abstract

Recent experiments in induced charge electrokinetics (ICEK) have shown that the standard theory generally overpredicts experimentally observed velocities. Such discrepancies reduce the efficacy of practical ICEK devices, and highlight our incomplete understanding of electrokinetic phenomena. Here, we present an automated experimental system that allows for the rapid collection of ICEK data under a variety of conditions (∼1000 per day) to help develop and constrain new theories. We demonstrate this system by studying the ICEK slip flows over electrodes that have been controllably “contaminated” with a dielectric layer, either SiO2 or an alkanethiol self-assembled monolayer, of known thickness. We also develop a theory that accounts for the effects of the dielectric coatings surface chemistry that yields quantitative agreement with experiments over nearly a thousand distinct conditions in the SiO2 system and present an additional three thousand experiments of flows over alkanethiol monolayers. Our experimental system allows the direct interrogation of the physico-chemical effects that influence ICEK flows and for the optimization of these flows in lab-on-a-chip systems.

Graphical abstract: An automated, high-throughput experimental system for induced charge electrokinetics

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
07 Apr 2010
Accepted
18 Jun 2010
First published
09 Aug 2010

Lab Chip, 2010,10, 2350-2357

An automated, high-throughput experimental system for induced charge electrokinetics

A. J. Pascall and T. M. Squires, Lab Chip, 2010, 10, 2350 DOI: 10.1039/C004926C

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements