Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2023
Volume 68, Number 3
Las Vegas, Nevada (March 5-10)
Virtual (March 20-22); Time Zone: Pacific Time
Session Y18: Fluids XIII
8:00 AM–10:24 AM,
Friday, March 10, 2023
Room: Room 210
Sponsoring
Unit:
DFD
Chair: Liam Pocher, University of Maryland
Abstract: Y18.00005 : Graphene-based thermal pump to enable continuous water flow through slit nanochannels: The Role of Flexural Phonons*
8:48 AM–9:00 AM
Presenter:
Elton E Oyarzua
(University of Concepcion)
Authors:
Elton E Oyarzua
(University of Concepcion)
Harvey A Zambrano
(Federico Santa Maria Technical University)
J H Walther
(Technical University of Denmark)
In this study, by performing all-atom Non-Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics simulations, we propose a graphene-based thermal nanopump which produces controlled and continuous water flow in nanoslit channels. Upon systematically imposing thermal gradients, a significant net fluid flow towards the low-temperature zone is measured in all cases. The present nanopump produces water flow with average velocities up to 3 m/s. We find that the water flow rates increase due to an enhancement of the wall thermal rippling as higher temperature gradients are imposed. Moreover, vibrational and phonon Density-of-States analyses on graphene walls reveal that the out-of-plane flexural phonons are responsible for the water flow production. We notice that lower frequency phonon branches are activated with higher imposed temperature gradients. This study provides the basis for developing a functional thermal pumping system based on sheets of graphene, which is capable to produce continuous water flow in nanofluidic conduits, opening the door to practical exploitation of thermal gradients for fluid transport in integrated nanofluidic devices.
*We acknowledge partial funding from ANID through Fondecyt Regular project N° 1212053 and massive computational resources from DTU Physics.
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