Determination of the zeta potential for highly charged colloidal suspensions

We compute the electrostatic potential at the surface, or zeta potential ζ, of a charged particle embedded in a colloidal suspension using a hybrid mesoscopic model. We show that, for weakly perturbing electric fields, the value of ζ obtained at steady state during electrophoresis is statistically indistinguishable from ζ in thermodynamic equilibrium. We quantify the effect of counter-ion concentration on ζ. We also evaluate the relevance of the lattice resolution for the calculation of ζ and discuss how to identify the effective electrostatic radius.