Convective Delivery of Electroactive Species to Annular Nanoband Electrodes Embedded in Nanocapillary-Array Membranes

Significant technological drivers motivate interest in the use of reaction sites embedded within nanometer-scale channels, and an important class of these structures is realized by an embedded annular nanoband electrode (EANE) in a cylindrical nanochannel. In this structure, the convective delivery of electroactive species to the nanoelectrode is tightly coupled to the electrochemical overpotential via electroosmotic flow. Simulation results indicate that EANE arrays significantly outperform comparable microband electrode/microchannel structures, producing higher conversion efficiencies at low Peclet number. The results of this in-depth analysis are useful in assessing possible implementation of the EANE geometry for a wide range of electrochemical targets within microscale total analysis systems.