Reversal of Electroosmotic Flow in Charged Nanopores with Multivalent Electrolyte

• Published in: Langmuir Vol. 38; no. 12; pp. 3817 - 3823
• Main Authors: Telles, Igor M, Levin, Yan, dos Santos, Alexandre P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 29-03-2022
• ISSN: 0743-7463; 1520-5827
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.1c03475

We study the reversal of electroosmotic flow in charged cylindrical nanopores containing multivalent electrolyte. Dissipative particle dynamics is used to simulate the hydrodynamics of the electroosmotic flow. The electrostatic interactions are treated using 3D Ewald summation, corrected for a pseudo-one-dimensional geometry of the pore. We observe that, for sufficiently large surface charge density, condensation of multivalent counterions leads to the reversal of the pore’s surface charge. This results in the reversal of electroosmotic flow. Our simulations show that the Smoluchowski equation is able to quantitatively account for the electroosmotic flow through the nanopore, if the shear plane is shifted from the position of the Stern contact surface.