Determination of electrolyte friction from measurements of the tracer diffusion coefficients, mutual diffusion coefficients, and electrophoretic mobilities of charged spheres

The technique of fluorescence recovery after photobleaching has been used to measure the tracer diffusion coefficient of fluorescein-labeled charged polystyrene spheres in dilute solutions as a function of solution ionic strength. As the ratio of the particle radius (a) to the Debye–Hückel screening length (κ−1) was varied from 13 to 0.6, a 20% reduction in tracer diffusion coefficient was observed. The mutual diffusion coefficient, measured by quasielastic light scattering, increased as κa was reduced, demonstrating the dominant effect of thermodynamic factors on this parameter. The tracer data have been compared with theoretical predictions of other workers describing the influence of small-ion interactions with a charge sphere on its translational friction. The theoretical results of Schurr, and Booth, involve an explicit dependence on the electrokinetic charge of the sphere and yield estimates of this parameter (by least squares) which are significantly smaller than those obtained from laser Doppler electrophoretic light scattering results for the electrophoretic mobility of the labeled spheres. Approximations in the theoretical analyses are expected to account for these discrepancies.