Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 9, 2026

The Preparation of Electrohydrodynamic Bridges from Polar Dielectric Liquids
Published on: September 30, 2014
Dynamic and dielectric response of charged colloids in electrolyte solutions to external electric fields
Jiajia Zhou1, Roman Schmitz, Burkhard Dünweg
1Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Staudingerweg 7, D-55099 Mainz, Germany. zhou@uni-mainz.de
Abstract:
Computer simulations are used to investigate the response of a charged colloid and its surrounding microion cloud to an external electric field. Both static fields and alternating fields are considered. A mesoscopic simulation method is implemented to account in full for hydrodynamic and electrostatic interactions. The response of the system can be characterized by two quantities: the mobility and the polarizability. Due to the interplay of the electrostatic attraction and hydrodynamic drag, the response of the microions close to the colloid surface is different from that of the microions far away from the colloid. Both the mobility and polarizability exhibit a dependency on the frequency of the external fields, which can be attributed to the concentration polarization, the mobility of the microions, and the inertia of microions. The effects of the colloidal charge, the salt concentration, and the frequency of the external fields are investigated systematically.
Related Concept Videos
Dielectric Polarization in a Capacitor
The Colloidal State
The Electrical Double Layer
Electric Field of a Charged Disk
The system's symmetry is in the cylindrical directions across the plane of the charge. As a result, the electric fields created by various surface charge elements nullify each other in the direction parallel to the surface. Thereby, the resulting electric field is perpendicular to the plane. Since the disk is...
Electrostatic Boundary Conditions in Dielectrics
Consider a case where both the mediums across a boundary are two different dielectric materials. Recall that the electric field and electric displacement are proportional and related through the material's permittivity.
The Debye–Hückel Theory of Electrolyte Solutions

