A quantitative model to evaluate the ion-enrichment and ion-depletion effect at microchannel-nanochannel junctions.

In a nanometer-scale fluidic channel (nanochannel), coions are depleted while counterions are concentrated due to the electric double layer (EDL) overlap. When an electric field is applied across the nanochannel, ions are enriched at one end and depleted at the other end of the nanochannel. This phenomenon is termed the ion-enrichment and ion-epletion (IEID) effect. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model to evaluate this effect. The model takes into accounts not only the biased electrophoretic migrations but also the net charge transportation caused by electroosmotic flow. In addition, we consider the conductance change inside the nanochannel in assessing the electric field strength across it. We employ our recently developed protocol to measure these values. We establish a protocol to measure/quantitate the IEID effect. Finally, we compare the calculated results with the experimentally measured data and show good agreements between them.