Ionic current rectification under concentration gradients and its application in evaluating surface charge properties of micropores

TL;DR

This paper investigates ionic current rectification caused by electroosmotic flow in micropores under concentration gradients, developing models to evaluate surface charge properties based on experimental and simulation data.

Contribution

It introduces effective equations for ion concentration distribution and ICR ratio calculation, enabling surface charge density evaluation of micropores from experimental measurements.

Findings

ICR exhibits voltage-dependent ratios in micropores.

Large deviations occur between internal and bulk ion concentrations under certain conditions.

The developed equations accurately estimate surface charge density from ICR measurements.

Abstract

Ionic current rectification (ICR) induced by electroosmotic flow (EOF) under concentration gradients can find many applications in micro/nanofluidic sensing and ionic circuits. Here, we focused on the cases with micropores of moderate length-diameter ratios, through experimental research and systematical simulations, the EOF-induced ICR was found to exhibit voltage-dependent ratios. In the considered cases with a weak EOF or strong ionic diffusion, a large deviation appears between the ion concentration inside the micropore and the bulk value, which fails the prediction by solution conductivity gradients. Based on our simulation results, effective equations were developed for the theoretical description of ion concentration distributions along the micropore axis under coupled concentration gradient and electric field. With the predicted ion distributions inside micropores, the ICR ratio can be conveniently calculated with the derived electrical resistance of the microfluidic system, which applies to micropores of 200 to 1000 nm in diameter. Because the surface charge density is the only unknown input parameter, our developed equations can be used to evaluate the surface charge density of micropores with the measured EOF-induced ICR ratio under concentration gradients.