Temperature-induced migration of electro-neutral interacting colloidal particles

Migration of colloidal particles induced by temperature gradients is commonly referred to as thermodiffusion, thermal diffusion, or the (Ludwig-)Soret effect. The thermophoretic force experienced by a colloidal particle that drives thermodiffusion consists of two distinct contributions: a contribution resulting from internal degrees of freedom of single colloidal particles, and a contribution due to the interactions between the colloids. We present an irreversible thermodynamics based theory for the latter collective contribution to the thermophoretic force. The present theory leads to a novel “thermophoretic interaction force” (for uncharged colloids), which has not been identified in earlier approaches. In addition, an N-particle Smoluchowski equation including temperature gradients is proposed, which complies with the irreversible thermodynamics approach.

A comparison with experiments on colloids with a temperature dependent attractive interaction potential over a large concentration and temperature range is presented. The comparison shows that the novel thermophoretic interaction force is essential to describe data on the Soret coefficient and the thermodiffusion coefficient.