AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Particle Mobility Dependence on the Frequency of Applied Electric Field
MINGDONG LI, George Mulholland, Michael Zachariah, University of Maryland
Abstract Number: 234 Working Group: Aerosol Physics
Abstract The mobility of a nonspherical particle is a function of both particle shape and orientation. In turn the higher magnitude of electric field causes nonspherical particles to align more along the field direction, thus increasing their mobility. In our previous works [Li et al. 2013; Li 2012], we studied this effect on nanorods and doublets of spheres in DC electric fields, and showed that the experimental measurements were in excellent agreement with our developed theory for the orientation-averaged mobility and the dynamic shape factor applicable to any axially symmetric particles in an electric field.
In this work we find that when using a pulsed electric field that the measured mobility depends on the frequency of the field. More specifically and surprisingly we find that this effect is only true for non-conducting particles (e.g. PSL dimers). Conversely, the mobility of conducting particles, such as gold nanorods and soot, is independent of frequency.
This surprising result suggests it may be possible to separate conducting from non-conducting materials.