Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol.114, No.17, 7556-7562, 2001
Conductivity of deionized two-component colloidal suspensions
The low frequency ac-conductivity of deionized aqueous suspensions comprising of charged latex spheres is investigated. For the one-component cases sigma increases linearly with particle number density n, irrespective of the suspension structure. Two-component mixtures are found to form substitutional crystals and no phase separation is observed for small size differences. Then sigma is proportional to the sum of the individual conductivity contributions. Further at fixed composition the linear increase with n is retained. The effects can be well described with an extension of Hessinger's conductivity model to two-component systems.