Motion of a Colloidal Sphere Covered by a Layer of Adsorbed Polymers Normal to a Plane Surface

A combined analytical-numerical study is presented for the slow motion of a spherical particle coated with a layer of adsorbed polymers perpendicular to an infinite plane, which can be either a solid wall or a free surface. The Reynolds number is assumed to be vanishingly small, and the thickness of the surface polymer layer is assumed to be much smaller than the particle radius and the spacing between the particle and the plane boundary. A method of matched asymptotic expansions in a small parameter lambda incorporated with a boundary collocation technique is used to solve the creeping flow equations inside and outside the adsorbed polymer layer, where lambda is the ratio of the characteristic thickness of the polymer layer to the particle radius. The results for the hydrodynamic force exerted on the particle in a resistance problem and for the particle velocity in a mobility problem are expressed in terms of the effective hydrodynamic thickness (L) of the polymer layer, which is accurate to O(lambda2). The O(lambda) term for L normalized by its value in the absence of the plane boundary is found to be independent of the polymer segment distribution and the volume fraction of the segments. The O(lambda2) term for L, however, is a sensitive function of the polymer segment distribution and the volume fraction of the segments. In general, the boundary effects on the motion of a polymer-coated particle can be quite significant. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.