Electrical conductivity of a concentrated suspension of soft particles

A general expression for the electrical conductivity of a concentrated suspension of spherical soft particles (polyelectrolyte-coated particles) is obtained for the case where the overlapping of the electrical double layers of adjacent particles is negligible by using Kuwabara's cell model. It is shown that in the limit of very low potentials the obtained conductivity expression reduces to Maxwell's relation with respect to the volume fraction of the particle core and the contribution from the polyelectrolyte layer becomes negligible. An approximate conductivity expression is derived for the case of low potentials. (C) 2000 Academic Press.