Nanoparticle gel electrophoresis: soft spheres in polyelectrolyte hydrogels under the Debye-Hückel approximation

Fei Li; Stuart A Allison; Reghan J Hill

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2014.02.010

Nanoparticle gel electrophoresis: soft spheres in polyelectrolyte hydrogels under the Debye-Hückel approximation

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2014 Jun 1:423:129-42. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2014.02.010. Epub 2014 Mar 4.

Authors

Fei Li¹, Stuart A Allison², Reghan J Hill³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 0C5, Canada.
² Department of Chemistry, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30302-3965, United States.
³ Department of Chemical Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 0C5, Canada. Electronic address: reghan.hill@mcgill.ca.

PMID: 24703678
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2014.02.010

Abstract

A mathematical model for electrophoresis of polyelectrolyte coated nanoparticles (soft spheres) in polyelectrolyte hydrogels is proposed, and evaluated by comparison to literature models for bare-sphere gel electrophoresis and free-solution electrophoresis. The utilities of approximations based on the bare-particle electrophoretic mobility, free-solution mobility, and electroosmotic flow in hydrogels are explored. Noteworthy are the influences of the particle-core dielectric constant and overlap of the polyelectrolyte shell. The present theory, which neglects ion-concentration and charge-density perturbations, indicates that the gel electrophoretic mobilities of metallic-core nanoparticles in polyelectrolyte gels can be qualitatively different than for their non-metallic counterparts. These insights will be beneficial for interpreting nanoparticle gel-electrophoresis data, optimizing electrophoretic separations, and engineering nanoparticles for technological applications.

Keywords: Electrokinetic theory; Gel electrophoresis; Gel electrophoretic mobility; Soft nanoparticles.