Charge-dependent slip flow of ionic liquids through the non-uniform microfluidic device: pressure drop and electroviscous effects

TL;DR

This study explores how charge-dependent slip influences electroviscous effects, pressure drop, and flow characteristics in microfluidic devices with complex geometries, providing numerical and analytical insights for device design.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive numerical model incorporating charge-dependent slip effects and develops a simple analytical pressure drop model for microfluidic electroviscous flow.

Findings

Charge-dependent slip increases electrical potential by up to 78.68%.

Pressure drop decreases by up to 63.42% with slip effects.

Electroviscous correction factor increases significantly under slip conditions.

Abstract

This work investigates electroviscous effects in presence of charge-dependent slip in steady pressure-driven laminar flow of a symmetric (1:1) electrolyte liquid through a uniformly charged slit contraction - expansion (4:1:4) microfluidic device. The mathematical model comprising Poisson's, Nernst-Planck, Navier-Stokes, and current continuity equations are solved numerically using finite element method (FEM). The flow fields (electrical potential, charge, induced electric field strength, pressure drop, and electroviscous correction factor) have been obtained and presented for a wide range of parameters like inverse Debye length (K=2-20), surface charge density (S=4-16) and slip length ($0\le B_0\le 0.20$) at fixed Schmidt number (Sc=1000) and low Reynolds number (Re=0.01). The flow fields have shown complex dependence on governing parameters. The charge-dependent slip has further enhanced complexity of dependency in comparison to no-slip condition. The total electrical potential ($|\Delta U|$) maximally increases by 78.68%, and pressure drop ($|\Delta P|$) maximally decreases by 63.42%, relative to no-slip flow, over the ranges of conditions. The electroviscous correction factor ($Y=$ ratio of apparent to physical viscosity) increases by 33.58% under the no-slip ($B_0=0$) condition. It ($Y$) increases maximally by 72.10% for charge-dependent slip than in no-slip flow for considered ranges of the conditions. A simple analytical model to estimate the pressure drop in the electroviscous flow has been developed based on the Poiseuille flow in individual uniform sections and pressure loss due to thin orifice. The model overpredicts pressure drop by 2 - 4% from the numerical values. Finally, the predictive relations, depicting the functional dependence of numerical results on governing parameters, are presented for their practical use in design and engineering of microfluidic devices.