Numerical study of electroosmotic mixing enhancement

The lattice Boltzmann method has been conducted to simulate the external electric field, electric potential distribution in the electrolyte, the flow field and the species concentration distribution for electroosmotic flow in four typical types of microchannels including uniform plate channel, wall block channel, asymmetric heterogeneous wall potential and symmetrical heterogeneous wall potential channels. The simulation results show that the three types of enhancement channels can enhance the electroosmotic mixing to some extent. However, due to increase of the flow resistance, the mixing time is extended, which will result in a non-negligible effect on the mixing enhancement. In the studied three types of enhanced channels, microchannel with wall blocks can achieve more effective mixing efficiency within the less extension of the mixing time.