An electroosmotic pump (EOP), or EO pump, is used for generating flow or pressure by use of an electric field.[1][2] One application of this is removing liquid flooding water from channels and gas diffusion layers and direct hydration of the proton exchange membrane in the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) of the proton exchange membrane fuel cells[3].
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Electroosmotic pumps are fabricated from silica nanospheres[4][5] or hydrophilic porous glass, the pumping mechanism is generated by an external electric field applied on an electric double layer (EDL), generates high pressures (more than 340 atm (34 MPa) at 12 kV applied potentials) and high flow rates (e.g., 40 ml/min at 100 V in a pumping structure less than 1 cm³ in volume). EO pumps are compact, have no moving parts, and scale favorably with fuel cell design. The EO pump might drop the parasitic load of water management in fuel cells from 20% to 0.5% of the fuel cell power[6].
High pressures or high flow rates are obtained by positioning several regular electroosmotic pumps in series or parallel respectively[7].
Porous pumping is created by the use of sintered glass[8]. [9].
Planar shallow electroosmotic pumps are made of parallel shallow microchannels[10].