In electroosmotic dehumidification, a membrane composed of a desiccant material removes moisture from air to be conditioned. Then, electroosmotic pumping driven by the application of voltage moves the moisture across the membrane and rejects it on the other side. A bench top experiment was developed to screen promising membrane materials. Two sealed humidity chambers were separated by a membran...

The present work is an analytical and experimental study of electroosmotic flow (EOF) in cylindrical capillaries with nonuniform wall surface charge (zeta-potential) distributions. In particular, this study investigates perturbations of electroosmotic flow in open capillaries that are due to induced pressure gradients resulting from axial variations in the wall zeta-potential. The experimental ...

The effect of organic modifiers on the separation of a number of closely related isomeric benzoic acids by capillary electrophoresis is described. It is shown that while a single modifier concentration cannot help resolve the entire electropherogram, organic modifiers do significantly enhance the resolution of parts of the separation system by comparison with 40 mmol l-1 phosphate buffer. The e...

Due to electric field leakage across sharp corners, the irrotational character of Ohmic electroosmotic flow is violated. Instead, we demonstrate experimentally and theoretically evidence of electrolyte depletion and vortex separation in electroosmotic flow around a junction between wide and narrow channels. When the penetration length of the electric field exceeds the width of the narrow channe...

Due to the increasingly wide application of electroosmotic flow in micromachines, this paper investigates the electroosmotic flow of the power-law fluid under high zeta potential in a cylindrical microcapillary for different dimensionless parameters. The electric potential distribution inside a cylindrical microcapillary is presented by the complete Poisson-Boltzmann equation applicable to an a...

A thin layer of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) prepolymer, which is coated on a glass slide, is transferred onto the embossed area surfaces of a patterned substrate. This coated substrate is brought into contact with a flat plate, and the two structures are permanently bonded to form a sealed fluidic system by thermocuring (60 degrees C for 30 min) the prepolymer. The PDMS exists only at the conta...

Analytical solutions of time periodic electroosmotic flows in two-dimensional straight channels are obtained as a function of a nondimensional parameter kappa, which is based on the electric double-layer (EDL) thickness, kinematic viscosity, and frequency of the externally applied electric field. A parametric study as a function of kappa reveals interesting physics, ranging from oscillatory "pl...

Electroosmotic flow has been shown to be controlled via an applied radial voltage. Many factors determine the effectiveness of this control, and one major factor is buffer pH. In this study the effectiveness of the applied radial voltage for controlling electroosmotic flow while varying buffer pH is examined. Previously developed theory is applied and compared to experimental results for a pH r...

A characterization and optimization of the in vitro transdermal iontophoretic transport of 5-hydroxy-2-(N,N,-di-n-propylamino)tetralin (5-OH-DPAT) is presented. The utility of acetaminophen as a marker of electroosmotic flow was studied as well. The following parameters of iontophoretic transport of 5-OH-DPAT were examined: drug donor concentration, electroosmotic contribution, influence of co-...

As microfluidic technologies mature, increasingly complex solutions are employed, and accurate methods for the measurement of electroosmotic flow rates are becoming increasingly important. The methodologies of both a direct method and an indirect method of flow rate measurement are presented here. The direct method involves flow visualization using trace amounts of a caged fluorescent dye. The ...