چكيده به لاتين
In recent years there have been considerable studies in the world about the application of Soft Nanochannels to improve the electrokinetic phenomena such as streaming potential. Until now, the models were developed with respect to assuming ions as effective point charges. The novelty of this thesis is that the model of streaming potential inside of the soft Nanochannel is developed with taking the ionic size effect into the account. The distribution of the ions inside the soft Nanochannel was estimated based on Poisson-Bikerman correlation and the steric factor represents the effective size of ions on the governing equations those are presented at this thesis. Resultant equations were modified for a symmetrical electrolyte solution inside a slit nanochannel covered by polyelectrolyte layer. All of the equations of this model were solved using numerical and semi-analytical methods. According to the results, it was found that with increasing number density of fixed charges inside polyelectrolyte layer that leads to increase in electrical potential in nanochannel width, will cause an increase in error if the ionic ignored by putting the steric factor to zero. The accumulation and the compression of the ions near the wall of the nanochannel leads to this error. Moreover, it can also lead to decrease the distance between ions until less than ionic radius, which is not reasonable. To dealing with the aforementioned challenges, considering the size of the ions is pivotal. Taking this assumption leads to avoid from accumulation and compression of the ions. In addition to previous point, increasing the ionic size makes wider area of nanochannel under influence of the electrical potential. The results of this thesis also are revealed that the streaming potential was increased by increasing the ionic size, for the average values of the number density of fixed charges inside the soft layer. Therefore, as the result the efficiency of the electrochemomechanical energy conversion will be increase up to 40%.
Keywords: Streaming Potential, Soft Nanochannel, Ionic Size, Electrochemomechanical Energy Conversion