Electroosmotic Injection and Chemical Kinetics in Micro Reactors

The study of fluid flow in microchannels is of significant interest due to its application in a wide area of fields ranging from microscale flow injection, cooling of microchips, fuel vaporizer and micro reactors for chemical and biological systems. Design of effective electrokinetic micro reactors requires in-depth understanding of the electrokinetic phenomena and bulk reactions of species in the micro reactor. Although electrokinetic flows are popularly used for applications in the field of capillary electrophoresis (CE) [1], the phenomena of electroosmosis can be conveniently used for bulk transport and mixing of reagents. Electroosmosis occurs when the electrical double layer (EDL) near a solid-liquid interface is created by an external electric field. The uniqueness of electroosmotic flow (EOF) is characterized by plug velocity profile having uniform flow. Devasenathipathy et al. [2] showed that EOF offers a number of significant advantages over conventional pressure driven flow like reduced sample diffusion and controlled sample movement.