Particle-counterion clustering in highly charge-asymmetric complex fluids.

The formation of particle-counterion clusters through electrostatic interaction is studied in this work for a highly charge asymmetric colloidal suspension. The occurrence of such clustering is probed by the particle electrophoretic mobility, i.e., with the aid of a transport property. The results show that the effective charge manifesting under the presence of an external electric field is the renormalized charge predicted by an extension of the Debye-Hückel-Bjerrum theory to the fluid state of highly charged colloids.