ζ-potential determination using a ZetaMeter-Dynamic Speckle assembly

Resumen

Electrophoretic mobility and ζ-potential are important physical parameters for the characterization of micro- and nanosystems. In this communication we describe a new method for determining the ζ-potential through the assembly of two well known techniques: free electrophoresis and Dynamic Speckle. When coherent light passes through a fluid having scattering centres, the far field interference originates a speckled image. If the scattering centres are contained within the cylindrical electrophoresis cell of a ZetaMeter and are forced to move in an orderly way under the action of an external electric field, the time variation of the light intensity in the far field speckle images follows a temporal autocorrelation function g(τ). The corresponding correlation time can then be obtained and related with the velocity, from which the electrophoretic mobility and the ζ-potential of the scattering centres can be determined. We have applied this method to microparticles, like natural air-floated silica and two classes of bioceramics, hydroxyapatite and biphasic calcium phosphate. For comparison, we analysed the same samples in parallel using a commercial Zetasizer Nano from Malvern Instruments. The values of ζ-potential determined using the two techniques were the same within ~3% error. These results validate our new method as a useful and efficient alternative for ζ-potential determination of particles, at least within the micrometer scale