Electrophoretic mobility of spherical particles in bounded domain

Abstract

In this study, we improve on our 3D steady-state model of electrophoretic motion of spherical particles in bounded fluidic channels (Liu et al., 2014) to include the effect of nonsymmetric electrolytes, and further validate this improved model with detailed comparisons to experimental data. Specifically, we use the experimentally-measured particle mobilities from the work of Semenov et al. (2013), Napoli et al. (2011), and Wynne et al. (2012) to determine the corresponding particle zeta potentials using our model, and compare these results with classical theory. Incorporating the effects of nonsymmetric electrolytes, EDL polarization, and confinement, we show that our improved model is applicable to a wide range of practical experimental conditions, for example, particles that have high zeta potentials in a bounded channel filled with nonsymmetric electrolyte solutions, where classical theory is not applicable. In addition, we find that when electrolyte concentration is comparable to the concentration of hydronium or hydroxide ions, the complicated composition of ions increases the particle mobility. Finally, increased electrophoretic mobility can be observed when buffer solutions (phosphate or borate) were used as electrolyte solutions in experiments as opposed to simple symmetric electrolytes.