2003/06/30 by J. P. Huang, Mikko Karttunen, K. W. Yu +2
Physics and Astronomy · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #cond-mat.soft #physics.bio-ph #q-bio
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.69.051402
published as Phys. Rev. E 69, 051402 (2004) · Revised version with minor changes: References added and discussion extended
arxiv created 2003/11/07 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
We present a theory to investigate electro-kinetic behavior, namely, electrorotation and dielectrophoresis under alternating current (AC) applied fields for a pair of touching inhomogeneous colloidal particles and biological cells. These inhomogeneous particles are treated as graded ones with physically motivated model dielectric and conductivity profiles. The mutual polarization interaction between the particles yields a change in their respective dipole moments, and hence in the AC electrokinetic spectra. The multipolar interactions between polarized particles are accurately captured by the multiple images method. In the point-dipole limit, our theory reproduces the known results. We find that the multipolar interactions as well as the spatial fluctuations inside the particles can affect the AC electrokinetic spectra significantly.