Coupling electrokinetics and rheology: Electrophoresis in non-Newtonian fluids

We present a theoretical scheme to calculate the electrophoretic motion of charged colloidal particles immersed in complex (non-Newtonian) fluids possessing shear-rate-dependent viscosities. We demonstrate that this non-Newtonian rheology leads to an explicit shape and size dependence of the electrophoretic velocity of a uniformly charged particle in the thin-Debye-layer regime, in contrast to electrophoresis in Newtonian fluids. This dependence is caused by non-Newtonian stresses in the bulk (electroneutral) fluid outside the Debye layer, whose magnitude is naturally characterized in an electrophoretic Deborah number.