Compression and lubrication of salt free polyelectrolyte microgel particles in highly compressed suspensions by...

The compression of polyelectrolyte microgel particles in a salt-free highly compressed colloid due to osmotic pressure outside of the particles due to counterions located there is studied for a model based on a quasi-analytic solution of the Poisson-Boltzmann equation and a model for the gel elasticity based on counterion osmotic pressure inside the particles and polymer elasticity (of entropic origin). It is found that for particles of radius of the order of a tenth of a micron, the counterion osmotic pressure should play a significant role in the compression of the particles, especially particles which do not have a corona (i.e., nonlinked polymer chains attached to their surface). The presence of a corona of monomer density smaller than that of the core of the microgel reduces the contribution of the osmotic pressure due to counterions outside of the microgel. It is also demonstrated that counterion osmotic pressure outside the particles can provide a significant contribution to the lubrication of the interface between the particles and a surface along which the compressed colloid is made to slide, for sufficiently slow velocities.