Electrokinetic flow and energy conversion induced by streaming potential in nanochannels with symmetric corrugated walls

A theoretical and numerical investigation of electrokinetic flow is performed in a nanochannel with the charged symmetric corrugated surfaces. The perturbation and numerical solutions of electrokinetic flow variables are given, and the effects of corrugation geometry, such as wave amplitude and wave number, on the electrokinetic flow characteristics are systematically examined. The results show that the electrokinetic flow recirculation may occur easily at wave crest due to the electroviscous effect. The velocity profile is strongly dependent on wave number, but the maximum or minimum velocity may be insusceptible to wave number. Furthermore, the distributions of streaming potential and energy conversion efficiency are also investigated. We find that, for some special geometry of corrugations, the streaming current and conversion efficiency obtained from the present corrugated nanochannel are higher than that from the smooth nanochannel. Specially, when the dimensionless wave number is 0.5/π, the magnitude of streaming potential is enhanced about 29% at δ = 0.5 and the peak value of conversion efficiency is enhanced about 2% at δ = 0.1. We believe that the optimal corrugation geometry parameters can be of benefit in designing a microfluidic device with higher streaming current and conversion efficiency.