Recent developments in microfluidics have highlighted the importance of efficiently transporting fluids at the micron scale. This has lead to a resurgence of interest in utilizing electrokinetic phenomena, which scale favorably with the small channel dimensions encountered in microfluidics, to drive fluid flows.;This dissertation focuses on induced charge electro-osmosis (ICEO), a nonlinear electrokinetic effect in which an applied electric field both induces and drives a layer of charged fluid near an electrically conductive surface. ICEO has been shown to produce time-averaged flows with AC electric fields and may provide an on-chip means of generating high pressure flows with low applied voltages. Experimental studies of ICEO have shown that standard theories generally overpredict the observed slip velocity, frequently by orders of magnitude.;This discrepancy could be explained by the presence of a thin coating of an adventitious dielectric over the conductive surface. In this work, I develop a modified theory of ICEO that incorporates the effects of a dielectric coating and its surface chemistry, both of which act to decrease the slip velocity relative to a clean metal. This theory shows that a layer of dielectric contaminant of only nanometer thickness can lead to significantly suppressed ICEO flows.;In order to test this theory, I developed a novel experimental apparatus, the details of which are presented herein, that allows for the observation of ICEO flows over planar surfaces coated with dielectrics of controlled physical properties. Data for over 8000 combinations of parameters over both an oxide dielectric and alkanethiol self-assembled monolayer show unprecedented quantitative agreement with this modified theory.;The goal for engineering practical microfluidic devices is to generate the fastest flows possible for a given set of conditions. I end the dissertation with a discussion of how to generate flows that are orders of magnitude faster than those over a solid surface by using thin liquid films. This result follows from the fact that the electrical stress in the electrolyte drives the electrolyte/thin film interface itself into motion.
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