This paper studies the flow characteristics in micro/nano-channels subjected to an applied electric field. The nano-channel flow was observed by means of the fluorescence Calcein. A Fluorescence Concentration Gradient Interface (FCGI) was observed across the nano-channel array. The front of the FCGI was shown to have an analogous parabolic shape. The propagation of this interface reflects indirectly the induced pressure at the micro/nano-channel junction, where the enrichment-depletion processes are known to take place. This induced pressure was predicted by numerical simulations, and this paper gives the first experimental evidence.
Direct measurement of slip length is based on the measured fluid velocity near solid boundary. However, previous micro particle image velocimetry/particle tracking velocimetry (microPIV/PTV) measurements have reported surprisingly large measured near-wall velocities of pressure-driven flow in apparent contradiction with the no-slip hy-pothesis and experimental results from other techniques. To better interpret the measured results of the microPIV/PTV, we performed velocity profile measurements near a hy-drophilic wall (z = 0.25-1.5 μm) with two sizes of tracer particles (φ 50 nm and φ200 nm). The experimental results indicate that, at less than 1 μm from the wall, the deviations between the measured velocities and no-slip theoretical values obviously decrease from 93% of φ200 nm particles to 48% of φ50 nm particles. The Boltzmann-like exponential measured particle concentrations near wall were found. Based on the non linear Boltzmann distribution of particle concentration and the effective focus plane thickness, we illustrated the reason of the apparent velocity increase near wall and proposed a method to correct the measured velocity profile. By this method, the deviations between the corrected measured velocities and the no-slip theoretical velocity decrease from 45.8% to 10%, and the measured slip length on hy-drophilic glass is revised from 75 nm to 16 nm. These results indicated that the particle size and the biased particle concentration distribution can significantly affect near wall velocity measurement via microPIV/PTV, and result in larger measured velocity and slip length close to wall.
