Salt concentration and particle density dependence of electrophoretic mobilities of spherical colloids in aqueous suspension.

Using laser Doppler velocimetry in the superheterodyne mode, we conducted a systematic study of the electrophoretic mobility of dispersions of small silica spheres (a=18 nm) suspended in water at different salinities and particle concentrations. The concentration of NaCl was varied from 40 microM up to 16 mM, while the particle concentrations were varied between 4.2x10(18) and 2.1x10(20) m-3. We find a decrease of mobility with increasing salt concentrations and an increase with increased particle number densities. The latter observation is not backed by the standard cell model of electrophoresis with Shilov-Zharkikh boundary conditions. Rather, if the experimental data are interpreted with…