Flow
through nanopores has received a great deal of attention during
the past decade due to its versatile areas of application in biology
and engineering. The asymmetrical geometry of conical nanopores has
made these devices advantageous in rectification of ionic current
for counting and detection of biofluidic entities such as proteins
and DNAs. Protein solutions exhibit non-Newtonian rheological behavior
which mathematically alludes to a nonlinear relation between shear
stress and shear rate. In this study, the electroosmotic flow (EOF)
of non-Newtonian solutions through a conical nanopore with a constant
charge density on the wall is investigated numerically. Using the
assumption of continuity, the ionic transport in the EO flow is modeled
by combining the Poisson, Nernst–Plank, and Navier–Stokes
equations for potential field, ionic concentration, and velocity distributions,
respectively. The biofluid is assumed to behave as a non-Newtonian
power-law fluid with constant physical properties. For both overlapping
and nonoverlapping electric double layers, the effects of biofluid
rheological behavior, surface charge density, applied voltage, and
the ratio of the pore radius to the Debye length on the ionic current
rectification and the EOF are studied.
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