Electroosmotic (EO) pumps based on dc electroosmosis is plagued by bubble generation and other electrochemical reactions at the electrodes at voltages beyond 1 V for electrolytes. These disadvantages limit their throughput and offset their portability advantage over mechanical syringe or pneumatic pumps. ac electroosmotic pumps at high frequency (>100 kHz) circumvent the bubble problem by inducing polarization and slip velocity on embedded electrodes,1 but they require complex electrode designs to produce a net flow. We report a new high-throughput ac EO pump design based on induced-polarization on the entire channel surface instead of just on the electrodes. Like dc EO pumps, our pump electrodes are outside of the load section and form a cm-long pump unit consisting of three circular reservoirs (3 mm in diameter) connected by a 1x1 mm channel. The field-induced polarization can produce an effective Zeta potential exceeding 1 V and an ac slip velocity estimated as 1 mmsec or higher, both one order of magnitude higher than earlier dc and ac pumps, giving rise to a maximum throughput of 1 mulsec. Polarization over the entire channel surface, quadratic scaling with respect to the field and high voltage at high frequency without electrode bubble generation are the reasons why the current pump is superior to earlier dc and ac EO pumps.
The authors exposed a non-equilibrium dynamic counterion and coion analyte concentration to an AC electric field to selectively concentrate peptides at the poles of a cation-selective granule. The counterion polarization results from the focusing of the electric field show a discontinuous drop in the intra-granule counterion electromigration flux at the pole. The coion concentration polarization is due to the combined external convective and electromigration fluxes toward the pole that neutralize the accumulating counterions. Because the electromigration mobility of the peptide anion analyte depends on the pH, the authors determined a 20 000-fold high concentration factor for a near-neutral pH of 6.0 to 7.7. Because the peptide is protonated at the acidic pole and its absolute charge ranges from À0.3 to À1.9, the concentration factor scales exponentially with the absolute charge, thus allowing extremely selective concentrations of various peptides, which is demonstrated by fluorescein isothiocyanate tagged angiotensin I (pI $ 5.8) and Texas red tagged avidin (pI $ 10.5). This dynamic concentration effect can substantially enhance the sensitivity of bio-assays. V C 2013 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx
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