Electro-kinetics of charged-sphere suspensions explored by integral low-angle super-heterodyne laser Doppler velocimetry.

We investigated the flow behaviour of colloidal charged-sphere suspensions using a newly designed integral low-angle super-heterodyne laser Doppler velocimetry instrument, which combines the advantages of several previous approaches. Sample conditions ranged from strong electrostatic interactions with pronounced short-range order to individual particles with no spatial correlations. The obtained power spectra correspond to diffusion broadened velocity distributions across the complete sample cross section. The excellent performance of the instrument is highlighted in detail by the example of electro-kinetic flow of suspensions in a closed cell of a rectangular cross section. We demonstrate the excellent performance of our approach with the example of electro-phoretic-electro-osmotic experiments, showing that a comprehensive flow characterization becomes possible by analysing the measured electro-kinetic mobilities, the flow-profile, an effective diffusion coefficient and the integrated scattering density. We briefly discuss present limitations, possible extensions and interesting applications in other fields.