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Electrokinetic Phenomena in Microfluidics and Nanofluidics and Their Lab-on-a-Chip Applications

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 May 2025 | Viewed by 481

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology, West Da-Zhi Street 92, Harbin 150001, China
Interests: electrohydrodynamics; electrokinetics; dielectrophoresis; microfluidics; liquid metals

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Guest Editor
School of Electronics and Control Engineering, Chang’an University, Xi’an 710064, China
Interests: micro-/nanofluidics; electrokinetics; electrohydrodynamics; multiphase flow; electrochemical double layer; nonlinear ion circuits; on-chip sample handing

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Guest Editor
School of Mechatronics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Interests: MEMS; droplet microfluidics; organs-on-chip; single cell sequencing

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past two decades, ongoing research in the fields of microfluidics and nanofluidics has resulted in an increasing range of applications in the analysis of chemical and biological samples. Considering the advantages of their high flexibility and integrability, the capability of voltage-based control, and their domination over any other deterministic and stochastic forces at the micro- and nanometer scales, the electrokinetics and electrohydrodynamics of either linear or nonlinear voltage-dependence traits have already become the method of choice in these small-scale lab-on-a-chip devices delivering, manipulating, concentrating, separating, and sensing various kinds of leaky-dielectric soft-matter samples, including but not limited to ion species, charged biomolecules, micro- and nanoparticles, cells, fluids, droplets, and liquid interfaces. The involved phenomena may cover electroosmosis, electrophoresis, dielectrophoresis, dipole–dipole interactions, injection/conduction electrohydrodynamics, electrothermal convection, induced-charge electroosmosis/electrophoresis, flow field effect transistors, electrowetting, electrocapillarity, thermal–electric coupling, ion concentration polarization, ionic current rectification, electrochemical transport, streaming potential, etc.. These all arise from the electrostatic forces acting on either native charges or those induced by DC and/or AC electric fields externally applied across polarizable mediums confined in tiny channels, commonly at the quasi-electrostatic limit when local electroneutrality approximation is valid in the bulk. In order to review the state-of-the-art in the electromechanical behaviors of different target samples in micro- or nanofluidic chips, in this Special Issue of Applied sciences we welcome all original research or review articles on the fundamentals and applications of the various electrokinetic and electrohydrodynamic phenomena originated by distinct polarization mechanisms in modern micro- and nanofluidic chips.

Prof. Dr. Yukun Ren
Prof. Dr. Weiyu Liu
Dr. Ye Tao
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • micro-/nanofluidics
  • electrokinetics
  • electrohydrodynamics
  • electrochemical transport
  • soft matter
  • lab on a chip

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

22 pages, 6861 KiB  
Article
A Numerical Investigation of Enhanced Microfluidic Immunoassay by Multiple-Frequency Alternating-Current Electrothermal Convection
by Qisheng Wu, Shaohua Huang, Shenghai Wang, Xiying Zhou, Yuxuan Shi, Xiwei Zhou, Xianwu Gong, Ye Tao and Weiyu Liu
Appl. Sci. 2025, 15(9), 4748; https://doi.org/10.3390/app15094748 - 24 Apr 2025
Abstract
Compared with traditional immunoassay methods, microfluidic immunoassay restricts the immune response in confined microchannels, significantly reducing sample consumption and improving reaction efficiency, making it worthy of widespread application. This paper proposes an exciting multi-frequency electrothermal flow (MET) technique by applying combined standing-wave and [...] Read more.
Compared with traditional immunoassay methods, microfluidic immunoassay restricts the immune response in confined microchannels, significantly reducing sample consumption and improving reaction efficiency, making it worthy of widespread application. This paper proposes an exciting multi-frequency electrothermal flow (MET) technique by applying combined standing-wave and traveling-wave voltage signals with different oscillation frequencies to a three-period quadra-phase discrete electrode array, achieving rapid immunoreaction on functionalized electrode surfaces within straight microchannels, by virtue of horizontal pumping streamlines and transverse stirring vortices induced by nonlinear electrothermal convection. Under the approximation of a small temperature rise, a linear model describing the phenomenon of MET is derived. Although the time-averaged electrothermal volume force is a simple superposition of the electrostatic body force components at the two frequencies, the electro-thermal-flow field undergoes strong mutual coupling through the dual-component time-averaged Joule heat source term, further enhancing the intensity of Maxwell–Wagner smeared structural polarization and leading to mutual influence between the standing-wave electrothermal (SWET) and traveling-wave electrothermal (TWET) effects. Through thorough numerical simulation, the optimal working frequencies for SWET and TWET are determined, and the resulting synthetic MET flow field is directly utilized for microfluidic immunoassay. MET significantly promotes the binding kinetics on functionalized electrode surface by simultaneous global electrokinetic transport along channel length direction and local chaotic stirring of antigen samples near the reaction site, compared to the situation without flow activation. The MET investigated herein satisfies the requirements for early, rapid, and precise immunoassay of test samples on-site, showing great application prospects in remote areas with limited resources. Full article
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