Independent Ion Migration in Suspensions of Strongly Interacting Charged Colloidal Spheres

Abstract

We report on sytematic measurements of the low frequency conductivity in aequous supensions of highly charged colloidal spheres. System preparation in a closed tubing system results in precisely controlled number densities between 1E16/m3 and 1E19/m^3 (packing fractions between 1E-7 and 1E-2) and electrolyte concentrations between 1E-7 and 1E-3 mol/l. Due to long ranged Coulomb repulsion some of the systems show a pronounced fluid or crystalline order. Under deionized conditions we find s to depend linearily on the packing fraction with no detectable influence of the phase transitions. Further at constant packing fraction s increases sublinearily with increasing number of dissociable surface groups N. As a function of c the conductivity shows pronounced differences depending on the kind of electrolyte used. We propose a simple yet powerful model based on independent migration of all species present and additivity of the respective conductivity contributions. It takes account of small ion macro-ion interactions in terms of an effectivly transported charge. The model successfully describes our qualitatively complex experimental observations. It further facilitates quantitative estimates of conductivity over a wide range of particle and experimental parameters.