title: Electrophoretic mobility of a soft particle in a salt-free medium.
abstract: A theory is presented for the electrophoretic mobility mu of dilute spherical soft particles (i.e., polyelectrolyte-coated particles) in salt-free media containing only counterions. As in the case of other types of particles (rigid particles and liquid drops) in salt-free media, there is a certain critical value of the particle charge separating two cases, the low-surface-charge case and the high-surface-charge case. For the low-charge case, the mobility is proportional to the particle charge and coincides with that of a soft particle in an electrolyte solution in the limit of very low electrolyte concentrations kappa-->0 (Hückel's limit), where kappa is the Debye-Hückel parameter. For the high-charge case, however, mu becomes essentially constant, independent of the particle charge, due to the counterion condensation effect.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Institute of Colloid and Surface Science, Science University of Tokyo, 2641 Yamazaki, Noda, Chiba 278-8510, Japan. ohshima@rs.noda.tus.ac.jp
authors.forename: Hiroyuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ohshima