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Impact of laterally mobile surface charge on diffusiophoresis of hydrophobic rigid colloids

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2024

Subrata Majhi
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, India
Somnath Bhattacharyya*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, India
Partha P. Gopmandal
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, National Institute of Technology Durgapur, Durgapur 713209, India
*
Email address for correspondence: somnath@maths.iitkgp.ac.in

Abstract

The diffusiophoresis of charged hydrophobic nanoparticles (NPs) governed by an imposed ionic concentration gradient is analysed. The main objective is to elucidate the impact of the laterally mobile adsorbed surface ions at the interface on the propulsion of the hydrophobic NPs in diffusiophoresis. In addition, the dielectric polarization due to the difference in dielectric constant between the NPs and the suspension medium is also considered. The mobile surface ions create a friction as well as an electric force at the hydrophobic surface, which leads to a modification of the slip velocity condition and the slip length. We obtain an exact numerical solution of the governing electrokinetic equations in their full form by adopting a control volume formulation. The numerical model is supplemented by analytical solutions derived based on the Debye–Hückel linearization. We find that the lateral mobility of the surface ions obstruct the coions to diffuse from the higher concentration side to the lower concentration side, which results in a repulsive force to the particle leading to the occurrence of a negative mobility. Based on the numerical results and analytical solutions, we have shown that for a fully mobile surface charge, the diffusiophoresis of a hydrophobic NP is identical to the diffusiophoresis of a liquid droplet whose viscosity is related to the slip length of the hydrophobic particle. We establish that the dielectric polarization enhances the velocity of a hydrophobic particle, which has potential applications in the practical context.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press.
Figure 0

Figure 1. A schematic illustration of the diffusiophoresis of a hydrophobic polarizable particle and the spherical coordinate system.

Figure 1

Table 1. Values of $z_+$, $z_-$, $D_+$, $D_-$ and $\beta$ for some common electrolytes at $25\,^{\circ }\textrm {C}$.

Figure 2

Figure 2. Comparison of the exact numerical simulations with (a) the experimental results of Ebel et al. (1988) for a hydrophilic latex particle with $a=57\ \textrm {nm}$, (b) the analytical solution for different $\kappa a=1,10,50$ with $\sigma$ at $\lambda =1$ and $\chi _{s}=0$, and (c) with the analytical solution for different $\lambda =0.01,0.1,0.5,10$ at $\kappa a=10$ and $\sigma =-10$. In (b,c), the results are computed with NaCl ($\beta =-0.208$) as a background salt. In (a), green symbols, KCl; blue symbols, NaCl; red symbols, LiCl.

Figure 3

Figure 3. Variation of $\mu _{D}$ as a function of slip length $(\lambda )$ at $\kappa a=1~(\textrm {solid lines}),~10~(\textrm {dashed lines})$ in (a) NaCl ($\beta =-0.208$), (b) KCl ($\beta =0$) and (c) HCl ($\beta =0.65$) for different $\chi _{s}~(=0,0.5,0.8,1)$ with surface charge density $\sigma =-6$ and $\epsilon _{r}=0$.

Figure 4

Figure 4. Variation of slip velocity per unit concentration gradient at bare slip length $\lambda =3$ for $\kappa a=1$ (solid lines), 10 (dashed lines) in (a) NaCl ($\beta =-0.208$), (b) KCl ($\beta =0$) and (c) HCl ($\beta =0.65$) for different $\chi _{s}~(=0,0.5,0.8,1)$ with surface charge density $\sigma =-6$ and $\epsilon _{r}=0$. Circles, analytical expression of slip velocity (4.2).

Figure 5

Figure 5. Streamlines of the ionized fluid at (a) $\chi _{s}=0$ and (b) $\chi _{s}=0.8$ for $\sigma =-6$, $\kappa a=1$ and bare slip length $\lambda =3$ for NaCl ($\beta =-0.208$) electrolyte. (c) Variation of $\mu _{D}$ as a function of $\kappa a$ at $\sigma =-10.53$ and $\chi _{s}=1$ in NaCl electrolyte. Circles, Fan et al. (2022) for a dielectric droplet with viscosity ratio $\eta _{r}~(=1/3\lambda )=0.01,0.1,0.5,1,10$.

Figure 6

Figure 6. Variation of diffusiophoretic mobility as a function of $\kappa a$ at $\lambda =1$ in (a) NaCl ($\beta =-0.208$), (b) KCl ($\beta =0$) and (c) HCl ($\beta =0.65$) for different $\chi _{s}~(=0,0.5,0.8,1)$ with surface charge density $\sigma =-6$ and $\epsilon _{r}=0$. Pink circles, the Smoluchowski limit (3.11) under thin Debye length.

Figure 7

Figure 7. Variation of diffusiophoretic mobility as a function of $\sigma$ at $\lambda =1$ in (a) NaCl ($\beta =-0.208$), (b) KCl ($\beta =0$) and (c) HCl ($\beta =0.65$) for different $\chi _{s}~(=0,0.5,0.8,1)$ when $\kappa a=50$ and $\epsilon _{r}=0$. Dash lines, (3.4b); symbols, (3.2).

Figure 8

Figure 8. Variation of diffusiophoretic mobility as a function of $\epsilon _{r}$ when $\kappa a=5,10,50,100$, $\sigma =-10$, $\chi _{s}=0.5$ for (a) NaCl, (b) HCl, and (c,d) $\mu _{D}$ versus $\chi _{s}$ when $\kappa a=10$ for different $\epsilon _{r}=0,1,10,10^{2},10^{3}$ and $\sigma =-6$. (a,c) NaCl electrolyte; (b,d) HCl electrolyte with slip length $\lambda =1$.

Figure 9

Figure 9. Variation of $\mu _{D}$, $\mu _{E}$ and $\mu _{c}$ with $\epsilon _{r}$ at (a,c) $\kappa a=50$ and (b,d) $\kappa a=100$ for $\chi _{s}=0.5$ with surface charge density $\sigma =-10$ and $\lambda =1$. (a,b) NaCl electrolyte; (c,d) HCl electrolyte.