A brief introduction to contemporary electrokinetics

Abstract

The first notion of ions comes from Michael Faraday, and since then, many successes in understanding their nature have been achieved. The motion of charged molecules is necessary to maintain the energy flux through all living organisms, constantly accompanying energy conversion and storage at the cellular level. The industry uses them alike: for energy and chemical processing. The motion of charged particles is also used for entertainment, e.g. pitching thrill in motorsports when kinetic energy recovery systems provide immediate access to power stored in supercapacitors during the most dynamic manoeuvres. However, after almost 200 years, there are still many open, technological, and fundamental questions. The reader will find a perspective on fundamental and vibrantly researched phenomena, including ion transport, and ideas essential to understanding them.

Keywords:

• Electrokinetics
• ions
• conservation laws
• computational methods

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professor Peter Vaughan Elsmere McClintock for discussions, insightful comments and support. I would also like to thank Professor Ankur Gupta for the interesting discussions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paweł Jan Żuk

Paweł Jan Żuk received his PhD in theoretical physics from the Faculty of Physics, the University of Warsaw, in 2016. He was a post-doc at the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research, Polish Academy of Sciences and spent three years on a fellowship at the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, Princeton University. Currently, he is on a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences and the Department of Physics, Lancaster University. He is interested in mesoscopic physics, involving electrokinetics, hydrodynamics and thermodynamics. For these problems, he develops and applies novel computational methods and algorithms.