Numerical simulation of an electrochemical microchannel

Abstract

Microchannels can be found in most of the lab-on-a-chip experiments as these devices are intended to study the liquids in an isolated and easily controllable space. In these experiments it is common to manipulate liquids using electrodes and measure their electrochemical behaviour. The analysis of a lab-on-a-chip setup can be misleading without understanding the underlying physics. This requires numerical modelling. In this thesis finite element simulations will be used to investigate the fluid flow as well as the distribution of the charge carriers and the electric potential field in an electrochemical microchannel. The model of the channel will be subjected to three commonly used electrochemical experiments, i.e. cyclic voltammetry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and electric conductivity relaxation. The simulations will let us to predict real experiments and to elucidate the effect of the interaction between the electrochemical and fluid dynamics. This interaction results in recirculation in the fluid. Such phenomena can change the conductivity thus experiments can lead to incorrect estimates of various underlying parameters such as the Li diffusion coefficient and the surface exchange rates if neglected this phenomenon is neglected.

Date of Award	2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology