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Electrokinetic transport of monovalent and divalent cations in silica nanochannels

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Abstract

Electrokinetic transport of aqueous electrolyte solutions in nanochannels and nanopores is considered important toward the understanding of fundamental ion transport in many biological systems, lab-on-chip, and organ-on-chip devices. Despite the overall importance of these systems and devices, detailed calculations showing velocity and concentration profiles for multi-component, multi-valent ionic species are limited. In this paper, molecular dynamics simulations were employed to compute velocity and concentration profiles for an electrolyte mixture containing sodium, magnesium, and chloride ions with water as the solvent in a ~7-nm-deep amorphous silica nanochannel. The results indicate that addition of trace quantities of divalent Mg2+ ions to monovalent (NaCl) electrolyte solutions while preserving overall system electroneutrality increases the maximum electroosmotic velocity of the solution by almost two times. Additionally, analyzing concentration profiles of individual ions revealed that Na+ was found to be preferentially attracted to the negatively charged silica wall in comparison with Mg2+ likely due to the hydrated divalent cation having a larger size compared to the hydrated monovalent cation.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge partial financial support from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) through the US Army Research Office (ARO) Grant W911NF09C0079, the US Army Research Office (ARO) for Grant W911NF1010290, and NSF CBET-1335946. Nicolas Vasquez acknowledges support from CONICYT through Scholarship Number 221321041. The authors also acknowledge discussions with Jim Giuliani in Mechanical Engineering at OSU and the computational support from the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Ohio State University, 201 W.19th Ave, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Shaurya Prakash, Kaushik K. Rangharajan, Emily Rosenthal-Kim & A. T. Conlisk

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Universidad de Concepcion, Concepcion, Chile

    Harvey A. Zambrano & Nicolas Vasquez

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  1. Shaurya Prakash
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  2. Harvey A. Zambrano
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  3. Kaushik K. Rangharajan
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  6. A. T. Conlisk
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Correspondence to Shaurya Prakash or A. T. Conlisk.

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Prakash, S., Zambrano, H.A., Rangharajan, K.K. et al. Electrokinetic transport of monovalent and divalent cations in silica nanochannels. Microfluid Nanofluid 20, 8 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-015-1667-0

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