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Diffusiophoresis of a charged drop

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2018

Fan Yang
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
Sangwoo Shin
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
Howard A. Stone*
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: hastone@princeton.edu

Abstract

Diffusiophoresis describes the motion of colloids in an electrolyte or non-electrolyte solution where there is a concentration gradient. While most of the studies of diffusiophoresis focus on the motion of solid particles, soft objects such as drops and bubbles are also known to experience diffusiophoresis. Here, we investigate the diffusiophoresis of charged drops in an electrolyte solution both analytically and experimentally. The drop is assumed to remain spherical. An analytical solution of the diffusiophoretic velocity of drops is obtained by perturbation methods. We find that the flow inside the drop is driven by the tangential electric stress at the interface and it directly influences the diffusiophoretic speed of the drop. Using charged oil droplets, we measure the drop speed under solute concentration gradients and find good agreement with the analytical solution. Our findings have potential applications for oil recovery and drug delivery.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Copyright
© 2018 Cambridge University Press 
Figure 0

Figure 1. (a) Electric double layer (EDL): the ratio of the number of water molecules to that of the ions is exaggerated. The former is usually several orders of magnitude higher than the latter in a dilute solution. (b) Mechanism of diffusiophoresis when there is an external concentration gradient $\unicode[STIX]{x1D735}c_{\infty }$. The dotted line indicates the EDL around the colloid. The solid and dotted arrows indicate the directions of the chemi-osmotic flow (COF) and the electro-osmotic flow (EOF), respectively. As a consequence, the velocity of the colloid ($-\boldsymbol{u}_{d}$) is in the opposite direction in the laboratory frame.

Figure 1

Figure 2. (a) Model for a spherical drop: the particle surface is charged, either positively or negatively. The dotted line surrounding the particle represents the boundary layer. A spherical coordinate is fixed at the centre of the drop with the direction of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}=0$, namely $\boldsymbol{e}_{x}$, parallel to $\unicode[STIX]{x1D735}c_{\infty }$, $\boldsymbol{u}_{d}$ and $\boldsymbol{E}_{\infty }$. Also, $\boldsymbol{n}$ is the unit normal vector at the interface. (b) The coordinate used in the boundary-layer solutions.

Figure 2

Table 1. The solutions of the concentration, electric and velocity fields of different orders and regions. The expressions for $\overline{a}_{4}^{(0)}$ and $U_{d}^{(0)}$ are in (2.65) and (2.66), respectively.

Figure 3

Figure 3. The comparison of the analytical results and experiments for the diffusiophoretic velocity as a function of the viscosity ratio $\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$. The dots and error bars are experimental data. The dotted and solid lines are (2.66), with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F7}^{(1)}=0$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F7}^{(1)}=-0.4$, respectively. The electrolyte solution is NaCl with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}=-0.208$.

Figure 4

Figure 4. The diffusiophoretic velocity in NaCl solutions. The horizontal axis is the dimensionless zeta potential and curves with different viscosity ratios $\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$ are plotted. $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}=-0.208$ for NaCl solutions is used and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F7}^{(1)}$ is neglected.

Figure 5

Figure 5. The velocity field inside the drop and the migration velocity. All the flow fields are sketched in the drop or solid-particle reference frame. The first two figures are the drop-region velocity field (2.56) with (a) $\overline{a}_{4}^{(0)}=-1$ and (b) $\overline{a}_{4}^{(0)}=1$ and the uniform flow $U_{d,s}^{(0)}+U_{d,l}^{(0)}$ far away from the drop. (c) The far-field flow velocity $U_{d,s}^{(0)}$ outside a solid particle. We fix $U_{d,s}^{(0)}>0$ for these three cases (i.e. the uniform flow far away from the solid particle (c) is in the negative $x$ direction), then the diffusiophoretic speed of drop (a) is higher than the solid particle (c) because the drop-region flow field is in the same direction as the outer and boundary-layer flow fields. Similarly, the diffusiophoretic speed of drop (b) will be lower than that of (c).

Figure 6

Figure 6. Measurement of oil droplet ($\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}=1.82~\text{mPa}~\text{s}$) speeds along the dead-end pore at 10 s after entering, compared with theoretical results of diffusiophoresis and Marangoni effects (calculated using approaches outlined in Shin et al. (2016)). $x$ is the entrance distance and $L=400~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ is the length of the dead-end pore.