Modeling of electro-kinetic motion of Janus droplet

Abstract

Electro-kinetic manipulation Janus particles and droplets has attracted attention in recent years due to their potential application in microfluidics. Due to the presence of two different zone on the surface of particles with different charge distribution, the motion of the Janus particles are quite different than the that of regular particles. Therefore; the fundamental understanding of this motion is the key element for the further development of the microfluidic systems with Janus particles. In present study, electro-kinetic motion of Janus droplets inside a micro-channel is modeled using boundary element formulation. 2D formulation is verified against the reported experimental data in the literature. Results show that the 2D boundary element formulation is successful for the prediction of the electrophoretic velocity of the Janus droplets. The current formulation has a potential to model non-spherical particles and to study particle-particle and particle-wall interactions.