Density functional theory study on ion adsorption and electroosmotic flow in a membrane with charged cylindrical pores^†

† This paper was written in memory of Dr. Yiping Tang

ABSTRACT

Ion adsorption and electroosmotic flow induced by an external electric field have a variety of practical applications, especially for membrane technology. In this work, a partially perturbative density functional theory (DFT) based on the modified fundamental measure theory was applied to investigate the ion density distributions and partitions in a charged cylindrical pore. Different types of electrolyte solutions, including both charge symmetric and asymmetric, were examined using the proposed theory with various pore diameters, bulk densities, ion valencies and surface charge densities. The ion concentration profiles calculated with the theory exhibit good agreements with the results of the Monte Carlo simulations, while the results of the Poisson–Boltzmann equation deviate greatly especially for the high valence electrolytes in narrow cylindrical pores. Some interesting phenomena discovered in both experiments and simulations, such as the reverse distribution of the ions and charge inversion, can be well reproduced with the DFT. Based on the ion concentration distributions obtained from the DFT, the transient velocity profiles of the electroosmotic flow in the charged cylindrical nanopores were calculated with the Navier–Stokes (NS) equation. The characteristics of the electroosmotic flow were discussed under the different bulk electrolyte concentrations and thickness of the electric double layer inside the nanopore. The enhancement of the velocity near the pore wall, which cannot be described by the traditional theory, was well characterised by the DFT combined with the NS equation.

Keywords:

• Ion partition
• charged nanopore
• electroosmotic flow
• density functional theory
• Navier–Stokes equation

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to Yong-Jun Du for her effort on preparing the manuscript. Suggestions from Dr. Ying-Feng Li and Dr. Bo Peng are also greatly appreciated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

† This paper was written in memory of Dr. Yiping Tang

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 21176132].