Surface roughness effects in micro and nanofluidic devices

This paper investigates the effects of surface roughness on the flow behaviour inside micro and nanofluidic devices. The surface roughness governs the flow characteristics in the solid–fluid interface and therefore its impact has to be both qualified and quantified. Molecular dynamics simulations are employed to study the flow over rectangular corrugated surfaces with variable amplitude and assess the effects of the surface roughness that governs the flow behaviour near the solid–fluid interface. The simulations have been performed for various wall-fluid interaction parameters corresponding to different slip scenarios. As the surface attraction energy or the roughness height increase, the density layering in the near the wall region is enhanced by higher values or secondary layering phenomena. The outcomes also reveal a non-linear dependency of the slip generated on the roughness height.