Revisit of wall‐induced lateral migration in particle electrophoresis through a straight rectangular microchannel: Effects of particle zeta potential. Issue 6 (26th July 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Liu, Zhijian; Li, Di; Saffarian, Maryam; Tzeng, Tzuen‐Rong; Song, Yongxin; Pan, Xinxiang; Xuan, Xiangchun
• Editors: Xuan, Xiangchun; Kang, Yuejun; Sun, Jiashu
• Is Part Of: Electrophoresis. Volume 40:Issue 6(2019)
• Page Start: 955
• Page End: 960
• Publication Date: 2018-07-26
• Subjects: Electrical lift -- Particle focusing -- Surface conduction -- Electrokinetics -- Microfluidics; Electrophoresis -- Periodicals; Electrophoresis -- Periodicals; 541.372
• DOI: 10.1002/elps.201800198
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0173-0835

Abstract

Abstract: Previous studies have reported a lateral migration in particle electrophoresis through a straight rectangular microchannel. This phenomenon arises from the inherent wall‐induced electrical lift that can be exploited to focus and separate particles for microfluidic applications. Such a dielectrophoretic‐like force has been recently found to vary with the buffer concentration. We demonstrate in this work that the particle zeta potential also has a significant effect on the wall‐induced electrical lift. We perform an experimental study of the lateral migration of equal‐sized polystyrene particles with varying surface charges under identical electrokinetic flow conditions. Surprisingly, an enhanced focusing is observed for particles with a faster electrokinetic motion, which indicates a substantially larger electrical lift for particles with a smaller zeta potential. We speculate this phenomenon may be correlated with the particle surface conduction that is a strong function of particle and fluid properties.