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Strong Electronic Winds Blowing under Liquid Flows on Carbon Surfaces

Mathieu Lizée, Alice Marcotte, Baptiste Coquinot, Nikita Kavokine, Karen Sobnath, Clément Barraud, Ankit Bhardwaj, Boya Radha, Antoine Niguès, Lydéric Bocquet, and Alessandro Siria
Phys. Rev. X 13, 011020 – Published 17 February 2023
Physics logo See Focus story: Secret of Flow-Induced Electric Currents Revealed

Abstract

Solid-liquid interfaces display a wealth of emerging phenomena at nanometer scales, which are at the root of their technological applications. While the interfacial structure and chemistry have been intensively explored, the potential coupling between liquid flows and the solid’s electronic degrees of freedom has been broadly overlooked up till now. Despite several reports of electronic currents induced by liquids flowing in various carbon nanostructures, the mechanisms at stake remain controversial. Here, we unveil the molecular mechanisms of interfacial liquid-electron coupling by investigating flow-induced current generation at the nanoscale. We use a tuning fork atomic force microscope to deposit and displace a micrometric liquid droplet on a multilayer graphene sample, and observe an electronic current induced by the droplet displacement. The measured current is several orders of magnitude larger than previously reported for water on carbon, and further boosted by the presence of surface wrinkles on the carbon surface. Our results point to a peculiar momentum transfer mechanism between the fluid molecules and graphene charge carriers, mediated mainly by the solid’s phonon excitations. These findings open new avenues for active control of nanoscale liquid flows through the solid walls’ electronic degrees of freedom.

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  • Received 28 June 2022
  • Revised 27 October 2022
  • Accepted 12 January 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.13.011020

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

  1. Research Areas
  1. Physical Systems
Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

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Secret of Flow-Induced Electric Currents Revealed

Published 17 February 2023

Vibrations are the main drivers of a mysterious process in which a liquid flow generates an electric current in the solid below it.

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Authors & Affiliations

Mathieu Lizée1,*, Alice Marcotte1,*, Baptiste Coquinot1, Nikita Kavokine2, Karen Sobnath3, Clément Barraud3, Ankit Bhardwaj4,5, Boya Radha4,5, Antoine Niguès1, Lydéric Bocquet1, and Alessandro Siria1,†

  • 1Laboratoire de Physique de l’École Normale Supérieure, ENS, Université PSL, CNRS, 3 Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité, 75005 Paris, France
  • 2Department of Molecular Spectroscopy, Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Ackermannweg 10, 55128 Mainz, Germany
  • 3Université Paris Cité, Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques, CNRS, F-75013 Paris, France
  • 4National Graphene Institute, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom
  • 5Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • Corresponding author. alessandro.siria@lps.ens.fr

Popular Summary

Solid-liquid interfaces display a wealth of emerging phenomena at nanometer scales, which are at the root of their technological applications. While the interfacial structure and chemistry have been intensively explored, the potential coupling between liquid flows and the solid’s electronic degrees of freedom has been largely overlooked. Here, we unveil the molecular mechanisms of interfacial liquid-electron coupling by investigating flow-induced current generation at the nanoscale.

This work required the development of a new experimental instrument that allows us to control the motion of a micrometrical drop at the mesoscale on multilayer graphene surfaces with unprecedented accuracy. We use a tuning fork atomic force microscope to deposit and displace a micrometric liquid droplet on a multilayer graphene sample and observe an electric current induced by the droplet displacement. The measured current is several orders of magnitude larger than previously reported for water on carbon and is further boosted by the presence of surface wrinkles on the carbon surface. Our results point to a peculiar momentum-transfer mechanism between the fluid molecules and graphene charge carriers, mediated mainly by the solid’s phonon excitations.

Our experiments unveil the intimate mechanisms of hydroelectronic couplings, highlighting that phonon winds are at the root of liquid-flow-induced electronic currents on multilayer graphene materials. These findings open new avenues for active control of nanoscale liquid flows through the solid walls’ electronic degrees of freedom.

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See Also

Quantum Feedback at the Solid-Liquid Interface: Flow-Induced Electronic Current and Its Negative Contribution to Friction

Baptiste Coquinot, Lydéric Bocquet, and Nikita Kavokine
Phys. Rev. X 13, 011019 (2023)

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Vol. 13, Iss. 1 — January - March 2023

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