Thermocharge of a hot spot in an electrolyte solution

Abstract

We discuss the thermoelectric properties of a locally heated micron-size volume in an electrolyte solution. We find that such a hot spot carries a net charge Q which, for an excess temperature of 10 K, may attain hundreds of elementary charges. The corresponding Seebeck electric field E increases linearly with the radius r inside the heated area, then goes through a maximum, and decays as 1/r2 at larger distances. Our results could be relevant to optothermal actuation of electrolytes and colloidal suspensions.

10 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Transport in Charged Colloids Driven by Thermoelectricity
• Collective thermoelectrophoresis of charged colloids
• Charging of Heated Colloidal Particles Using the Electrolyte Seebeck Effect

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