Drag force, diffusion coefficient, and electric mobility of small particles. II. Application.

We propose a generalized treatment of the drag force of a spherical particle due to its motion in a laminar fluid media. The theory is equally applicable to analysis of particle diffusion and electric mobility. The focus of the current analysis is on the motion of spherical particles in low-density gases with Knudsen number Kn>>1. The treatment is based on the gas-kinetic theory analysis of drag force in the specular and diffuse scattering limits obtained in a preceding paper [Z. Li and H. Wang, Phys. Rev. E., 68, 061206 (2003)]. Our analysis considers the influence of van der Waals interactions on the momentum transfer upon collision of a gas molecule with the particle and expresses this influence in terms of an effective, reduced collision integral. This influence is shown to be significant for nanosized particles. In the present paper, the reduced collision integral values are obtained for specular and diffuse scattering, using a Lennard-Jones-type potential energy function suitable for the interactions of a gas molecule with a particle. An empirical formula for the momentum accommodation function, used to determine the effective, reduced collision integral, is obtained from available experimental data. The resulting treatment is shown to be accurate for interpreting the mobility experiments for particles as small as approximately 1 nm in radius. The treatment is subsequently extended to the entire range of the Knudsen number, following a semiempirical, gas-kinetic theory analysis. We demonstrate that the proposed formula predicts very well Millikan's oil-droplet experiments [R. A. Millikan, Philos. Mag. 34, 1 (1917); Phys. Rev. 22, 1 (1923)]. The rigorous theoretical foundation of the proposed formula in the Kn>>1 limit makes the current theory far more general than the semiempirical Stokes-Cunningham formula in terms of the particle size and condition of the fluid and, therefore, more attractive than the Stokes-Cunningham formula.