(185a) Comparitive STUDY ON the EFFECT of Material Morphology ON Electrokinetic-BASED Bioseparations

Electrophoresis in polymer hydrogels with nanometer-scale pore structure is widely used for the separation and purification of biological macromolecules. In gel-electrophoresis, the internal morphology of the gel also plays an important role in improving the separation. Research involving polymer gels with embedded nanoparticles of varying properties is quite attractive because of the multitude of potential applications, including separation of biomacromolecules, tissue scaffold growth, as well as the analysis of the efficiency and control of drug delivery. This project focuses on idealized capillary models whose characteristics are useful domains to mimic the gel morphology in the aforementioned nanocomposite gels. Analyses of the effects of various system parameters such as the channel cross sections, electrostatic potential, and aspect ratio, are some of the important aspects to be studied either analytically or computationally as shown by previous efforts. In this presentation we will compare computational results obtained from the analysis of electrophoresis in a diverging channel to those obtained analytically based on the use of electrokinetic hydrodynamics (EKHD) concepts coupled with the spatial averaging approach originally introduced by Slattery, Whitaker, and others.