Electromagnetohydrodynamic flows and mass transport in curved rectangular microchannels

Curved microchannels are often encountered in lab-on-chip systems because the effective axial channel lengths of such channels are often larger than those of straight microchannels for a given per unit chip length. In this paper, the effective diffusivity of a neutral solute in an oscillating electromagnetohydrodynamic(EMHD)flow through a curved rectangular microchannel is investigated theoretically. The flow is assumed as a creeping flow due to the extremely low Reynolds number in such microflow systems. Through the theoretical analysis, we find that the effective diffusivity primarily depends on five dimensionless parameters, i.e., the curvature ratio of the curved channel, the Schmidt number, the tidal displacement, the angular Reynolds number, and the dimensionless electric field strength parameter. Based on the obtained results, we can precisely control the mass transfer characteristics of the EMHD flow in a curved rectangular microchannel by appropriately altering the corresponding parameter values.