Steric-effect-induced enhancement of electrical-double-layer overlapping phenomena

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate that nontrivial interactions between steric effect and electrical-double-layer (EDL) overlap phenomena may augment the effective extent of EDL overlap in narrow fluidic confinements to a significant extent by virtue of rendering the channel centerline potential tending to the ζ potential in a limiting sense as the steric effect progressively intensifies. Such a behavior may result in a virtually uniform (undiminished) magnitude of the EDL potential across the entire channel height and may cause lowering of the total charge within the EDL.