title: Hard versus soft particle electrokinetics of silica colloids.
abstract: To verify the existence of a gel layer at the surface of silica, dependences of the electrophoretic mobility of fresh and aged colloidal silica particles on the KCl concentration are measured. These dependences, corrected for the relaxation/polarization effect, are fitted by analytical expressions based on the model of hard, soft, and brush surfaces. A bad fit is obtained for both silicas when its surface is considered ideal (hard). Much better fits are achieved with the invariable soft layer model for the fresh silica but especially for the aged silica whose surface is less charged probably as a result of an extension and/or loosening of the layer. A perfect fit is found for aged silica when applying a trivial model of the soft polyelectrolyte layer combined with the scaling model of polyelectrolyte brushes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mineralurgy and Environmental Technologies, Technical University in Kosice, Park Komenského 19, 04384 Kosice, Slovak Republic. jiri.skvarla@tuke.sk
authors.forename: Jirí
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Skvarla