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Thermoelectric effects of ice play an important role in many natural and engineering phenomena. We investigate, numerically and analytically, the electrification of finite-thickness ice slabs due to an imposed temperature difference across them. When exposed to a temperature gradient, thermoelectrification involves a fast initial stage dominated by Bjerrum defects and a subsequent slow stage driven by ionic defects. The time scales of the first and second stages are derived analytically and correspond to the Debye time scales based on the density of Bjerrum and ionic defects, respectively. For a given ice slab, at the steady state, the thermovoltage across it and the charge accumulation near its two ends depend strongly on its thickness, with the sensitivity of the thermovoltage being more pronounced. The discrepancy between the computed thermovoltage and experimental measurements is analyzed. The analysis shows that, although thermoelectric effects in ice were discovered 50 years ago, significant gaps, ranging from the bulk and interfacial properties of defects to the measurement of thermovoltage, exist in the quantitative understanding of these effects. Filling these gaps requires further experimental, theoretical, and computational studies. 

Magnetic particles confined in microchannels can be actuated to perform translation motion using a rotating magnetic field, but their actuation in such a situation is not yet well understood. Here, the actuation of a ferromagnetic particle confined in square microchannels is studied using immersed-boundary lattice Boltzmann simulations. In wide channels, when a sphere is positioned close to a side wall but away from channel corners, it experiences a modest hydrodynamic actuation force parallel to the channel walls. This force decreases as the sphere is shifted toward the bottom wall but the opposite trend is found when the channel is narrow. When the sphere is positioned midway between the top and bottom channel walls, the actuation force decreases as the channel width decreases and can reverse its direction. These phenomena are elucidated by studying the flow and pressure fields in the channel-particle system and by analyzing the viscous and pressure components of the hydrodynamic force acting on different parts of the sphere. 

CO 2 -based enhanced oil recovery is widely practiced. The current understanding of its mechanisms largely focuses on bulk phenomena such as achieving miscibility or reducing oil density and viscosity. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we show that CO 2 adsorption on calcite surfaces impedes decane transport at moderate adsorption density but enhances decane transport when CO 2 adsorption approaches surface saturation. These effects change the decane permeability through 8 nm-wide pores by up to 30% and become negligible only in pores wider than several tens of nanometers. The strongly nonlinear, non-monotonic dependence of decane permeability on CO 2 adsorption is traced to CO 2 's modulation of interfacial structure of long-chain hydrocarbons, and thus the slippage between interfacial hydrocarbon layers and between interfacial CO 2 and hydrocarbon layers. These results highlight a new and critical role of CO 2 -induced interfacial effects in influencing oil recovery from unconventional reservoirs, whose porosity is dominated by nanopores.