Electroosmotic Flow in Mixed Polymer Brush-Grafted Nanochannels

Mixed polymer brush-grafted nanochannels—where two distinct species of polymers are alternately grafted on the inner surface of nanochannels—are an interesting class of nanostructured hybrid materials. By using a coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation method, we are able to simulate the electrokinetic transport dynamics of the fluid in such nanochannels as well as the conformational behaviors of the mixed polymer brush. We find that (1) the brush adopts vertically-layered and longitudinally-separated structures due to the coupling of electroosmotic flow (EOF) and applied electric field; (2) the solvent quality affects the brush conformations and the transport properties of the EOF; (3) the EOF flux non-monotonically depends on the grafting density, although the EOF velocity in the central region of the channel monotonically depends on the grafting density.