Determination of the zeta potential for highly charged colloidal suspensions

Abstract

We compute the electrostatic potential at the surface, or zeta potential $\zeta$, of a charged particle embedded in a colloidal suspension using a hybrid mesoscopic model. We show that for weakly perturbing electric fields, the value of $\zeta$ obtained at steady state during electrophoresis is statistically indistinguishable from $\zeta$ in thermodynamic equilibrium. We quantify the effect of counterions concentration on $\zeta$. We also evaluate the relevance of the lattice resolution for the calculation of $\zeta$ and discuss how to identify the effective electrostatic radius.