Giant Thermoelectric Response of Confined Electrolytes with Thermally Activated Charge Carrier Generation.

The thermoelectric response of thermally activated electrolytes (TAEs) in a slit channel is studied theoretically and by numerical simulations. The term TAE refers to electrolytes whose charge carrier concentration is a function of temperature, as recently suggested for ionic liquids and highly concentrated aqueous electrolyte solutions. Two competing mechanisms driving charge transport by temperature gradients are identified. For suitable values of the activation energy that governs the generation of charge carriers, a giant thermoelectric response is found, which could help explain recent experimental results for nanoporous media infiltrated with TAEs.

Marangoni instability in a heated viscoelastic liquid film: Long-wave versus short-wave perturbations.

We investigate the Marangoni instability in a thin layer of viscoelastic fluid, confined between its deformable free surface and a substrate of low thermal conductivity. Following a theoretical analysis, we study the stability of the present system for the case when the fluid layer is subjected to heating from below. Here, we use the Maxwell model to depict the rheology of the viscoelastic fluid. Linear stability analysis of the quiescent base state reveals that, in addition to the conventional short-wave mode, a long-wave instability can also emerge in this system. We demonstrate the appearance of both the long-wave monotonic and oscillatory instabilities in such a system. We study this long-wave mode analytically using the scaling k∼sqrt[Bi] (k is the wave number and Bi is the Biot number), whereas the short-wave mode is examined numerically. The influential role of elasticity of the fluid and the other involved parameters on the stability of the system is aptly discussed, and their ranges are identified within which a particular instability mode gets critical.

Marangoni instability in a thin film heated from below: Effect of nonmonotonic dependence of surface tension on temperature.

We investigate Marangoni instability in a thin liquid film resting on a substrate of low thermal conductivity and separated from the surrounding gas phase by a deformable free surface. Considering a nonmonotonic variation of surface tension with temperature, here we analytically derive the neutral stability curve for the monotonic and oscillatory modes of instability (for both the long-wave and short-wave perturbations) under the framework of linear stability analysis. For the long-wave instability, we derive a set of amplitude equations using the scaling k∼(Bi)^{1/2}, where k is the wave number and Bi is the Biot number. Through this investigation, we demonstrate that for such a fluid layer upon heating from below, both monotonic and oscillatory instability can appear for a certain range of the dimensionless parameters, viz., Biot number (Bi), Galileo number (Ga), and inverse capillary number (Σ). Moreover, we unveil, through this study, the influential role of the above-mentioned parameters on the stability of the system and identify the critical values of these parameters above which instability initiates in the liquid layer.