1.
Phys Rev Lett
; 123(2): 028002, 2019 Jul 12.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-31386498
ABSTRACT
Thermal gradients lead to macroscopic fluid motion if a confining surface is present along the gradient. This fundamental nonequilibrium effect, known as thermo-osmosis, is held responsible for particle thermophoresis in colloidal suspensions. A unified approach for thermo-osmosis in liquids and in gases is still lacking. Linear response theory is generalized to inhomogeneous systems, leading to an exact microscopic theory for the thermo-osmotic flow, showing that the effect originates from two independent physical mechanisms, playing different roles in the gas and liquid phases, reducing to known expressions in the appropriate limits.