Electrical properties of polyelectrolyte layers adsorbed on colloidal particles at different ionic strength.

The investigation presents results on the low-frequency electrical polarization of β-FeOOH particles with adsorbed layers from sodium salts of poly(4-styrene sulfonate), poly(acrylic acid), and carboxymethyl cellulose, obtained by electric light scattering. The adsorption is realized in aqueous NaCl solutions of different concentration, and the suspensions of the coated particles are then rinsed to low conductivity. Several electro-optical parameters are sensitive to the conformation of the adsorbed polyelectrolyte layer. The particle electrical polarizability increases drastically with the concentration of NaCl (correlating with significant increase of the adsorbed amount of polyelectrolyte), while their electrophoretic mobility remains practically unchanged. Two time scales are involved in the stepwise relaxation of the electrical polarizability. The faster process is attributed to movement of ions in the polymer layer, restricted by the coiled conformation to smaller distances. The contribution of the Debye atmosphere outside the polymer layer remains almost unchanged, which correlates with the low sensitivity of the electrophoretic mobility to the increasing amount of adsorbed polyelectrolyte. Abrupt increase in a narrow interval of salt concentrations is observed both for the low-frequency component of the particle polarization and for the hydrodynamic layer thickness, indicating changes in the surface electric state, most probably due to swelling of the adsorbed polymer layer.