Ac electrokinetics is concerned with the study of the movement and behaviour of particles in suspension when they are subjected to ac electrical fields. The development of new microfabricated electrode structures has meant that particles down to the size of macromolecules have been manipulated, but on this scale forces other than electrokinetic affect particles behaviour. The high electrical fi...

We present a predictive framework for the controlled assembly of nanoparticles onto the surface of small (15 150 nm) electrode gaps using the dielectrophoretic (DEP) force. By combining Brownian dynamics (BD) simulations with continuum descriptions for the spatial distributions of nanoparticles, we arrive at a concise analytic description for the number of particles assembled as a function of t...

Bioremediation through the injection of electron donors and bacterial cultures is effective at treating chlorinated solvent contamination. However, it has had limited application in low permeability zones where amendments cannot be delivered successfully. This field-scale study investigated electrokinetics to enhance delivery lactate a clay site contaminated with solvents. Groundwater soil samp...

Spurred by the growing interest in utilising electroosmotic flow for microfluidic applications, a finite volume computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method is used to investigate steady electro-osmotic flows through a planar microfluidic contraction-expansion at low Reynolds number. The axial concentration profiles and pressure and potential changes occurring over the flow domain are compared wit...

The dielectric properties of single-shell spherical cells with an intrinsic dielectric dispersion have been investigated. By means of the dielectric dispersion spectral representation (DDSR) for the Clausius-Mossotti (CM) factor, we express the dispersion strengths as well as the characteristic frequencies of the CM factor analytically in terms of the parameters of the cell model. These analyti...

This study demonstrated the feasibility of utilizing electrokinesis in an electrodeless dielectrophoresis chip to separate and concentrate microparticles such as biosamples. Numerical simulations and experimental observations were facilitated to investigate the phenomena of electrokinetics, i.e., electroosmosis, dielectrophoresis, and electrothermosis. Moreover, the proposed operating mode can ...

We develop a multiphysics model to study the contribution of electrokinetics on the biomolecular detection process and provide a physical explanation of the two to three orders of magnitude difference in detection time between experimental results and theoretical predications at ultralow concentration. The electrokinetic effects, including electrophoretic force and electroosmotic flow, have bee...

The area of 'laboratory-on-a-chip', miniaturised or microfluidic analysis systems, is a rapidly developing field. At the microscale, electrokinetic processes become enhanced, and the advent of AC electrokinetics (EK) in recent years further promotes the development of electrokinetic devices for microfluidics. ACEK has demonstrated to manipulate fluids and polarisable particles at low voltages w...