title: Primary electroviscous effect in a dilute suspension of soft particles.
abstract: A theory for the primary electroviscous effect in a dilute suspension of soft particles (i.e., particles coated with an ion-penetrable surface layer of polyelectrolytes) in an electrolyte solution is presented. The general expression for the effective viscosity eta s of the suspension and the primary electroviscous coefficient p, which is further expressed in terms of a function L, is given. On the basis of the general expressions, we derive approximate analytic expressions for eta s and p, which are applicable when the density of the fixed charges distributed within the surface layer is low. Further we obtain a simple approximate analytic expression (without involving numerical integrations) for p applicable for most practical cases. It is found that the function L exhibits a minimum when plotted as a function of kappa a (kappa is the Debye-Hückel parameter and a is the particle core radius), unlike the case of a suspension of hard particles, in which case L decreases as kappa a increases, exhibiting no minimum. The presence of a minimum for the case of a suspension of soft particles is due to the fact that L is proportional to 1/kappa 2 at small kappa a and to kappa 2 at large kappa a. Because of the presence of this minimum, the difference in L between soft and hard particles becomes very large for large kappa a.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Institute of Colloid and Interface Science, Tokyo University of Science, 2641 Yamazaki, Noda, Chiba 278-8510, Japan. ohshima@rs.noda.tus.ac.jp
authors.forename: Hiroyuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ohshima
mesh_terms: D004583:Electrons; D007201:Indicator Dilution Techniques; D013535:Suspensions; D014783:Viscosity
chemical_list: D013535:Suspensions