EO Pumps using Track Etched Membranes
A group published a paper in Lab on a Chip (2012) using track-etched membranes for electro-osmosis.
There are a lot of eerily familiar terms and concepts in the paper. The title even sounds familiar:
Low-voltage electroosmotic pumps fabricated from track-etched polymer membranes
They created a device with metal mesh electrodes on the opposite sides of a TE membrane in order to minimize the distance and maximize the field. They’re successful in running their EO pump at just 2-5 volts. They report a max normalized flow rate of 0.12 ml min1 V1 cm2, which is a couple orders of magnitude below Jess’ measurements on pnc-Si.
Interesting details:
- They created their own track-etched membranes! 10 um thick, 100-200 nm pores
- Their mesh electrodes were stainless steel that they coated with gold – means they had gas formation
- They used DI water to minimize the current
We will attempt to recreate this using commercial track etched membranes, silver mesh with AgCl paste and implement it in a true lab on a chip/microchannel device. We have most of the materials and will jump into this when we move to the new lab.
https://trace-bmps.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Wang_Lab-Chip_2012.pdf