Ionic fluid criticality physics

Joule heat generated by the ionic current is removed through cooling jackets mounted on the transverse walls. This creates a transverse temperature gradient which drives a stable and usually deleterious convective flow (3). Furthermore, the axial temperature gradient in the thermal entrance region (10,11) near the tips of the electrodes may drive a buoyancy instability when the thermal gradient exceeds a critical value (4,12). Apart from the physical properties of the carrier fluid, the critical temperature... 

The two-term crossover Landau model has been successfully applied to the description of the near-critical thermodynamic properties of various systems, that are physically very different the 3-dimensional lattice gas (Ising model) [25], one-component fluids near the vapor-liquid critical point [3, 20], binary liquid mixtures near the consolute point [20, 26], aqueous and nonaqueous ionic solutions [20, 27, 28], and polymer solutions [24]. 

Due to the fact that the physical dimensions of the flow structures in microfluidic systems are in the micro-scale, the Reynolds numbers characterizing fluid-flow in microfluidic systems are well below the critical value for turbulence and the flow regime is, consequently, laminar (Pohar Plazl, 2008). Therefore, micromixers in microfluidic systems rely on molecular diffusion. In general, micromixers used for ionic liquid synthesis are designed in such a way that their internal flow geometries reduce diffusion distances. Some examples of micromixers used for ionic liquid synthesis are shown in Figure 3. 

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