Abstract

With the advent of nanotechnology, the ability to create and design new materials has increased dramatically. But new challenges also arise due to emergent phenomena that do not show up at the macroscale and are usually neglected, but indeed play a vital role at the nanoscale. One of these phenomena is the phoretic movement, a key mechanism which drives the migration of DNA , proteins and colloids through pores or inside nano and micro-channels due to “thermo- dynamic forces” such as temperature gradients, chemical potential gradients or electric fields. In this talk, we will focus on diffusion-phoresis (osmosis) and we will show that thanks to a scale separation, we are able to model the dynamics arising at interfaces, helping us to understand the physical frame-work and the relevant aspects on the phoretic movement.