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Feasible for high throughput applications, cheaper, faster, and easier than existing methods and eliminates the need for skilled technicians.
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Background There has been significant interest recently on the development of chip-based nanofluidic systems for molecular separations, especially of biomolecules, based on nanoscale phenomena including entropic trapping and shear-driven chromatography. In addition to a limited number of experimental efforts, there have been several important theoretical studies that have sought to elucidate the effects of nanoconfinement of liquids on the molecular distributions and trajectories in electrokinetic flows. Thus far, theoretical investigation of the effects of nanoconfinement on electrokinetic transport of fluids has outpaced experiments because the details of such fluid flows have been unobservable by routine far-field or near-field tech. Technology This technology includes methodologies for investigation of electrokinetic transport in channels with characteristic length scales of nanoscopic dimensions; shows how data obtained can be compared with analytical models for fluid transport within very small channels; and explores the potential for the use of nanoconfined electrokinetic transport in the development of new methodologies for molecular separation.