Evaluating the Mobility of Nanorods in Electric Fields

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, increasing their mobility or decreasing their mobility diameter. In previous works, Li et al. developed a general theory for the orientation-averaged mobility and the dynamic shape factor applicable to any axially symmetric particles in an electric field, and applied it to the specific cases of nanowires and doublets of spheres. In this work, the theory for a nanowire is compared with experimental results of gold nanorods with known shape determined by TEM images. We compare the experimental measured mobility sizes with the theoretical predicted mobility in the continuum, free molecular, and the transition regime. The mobility size shift trends in the electric fields based on our model, expressed both in the free molecular regime and in the transition regime, are in good agreement with the experimental results. For rods of dimension: width d r = 17 nm and length L r = 270 nm, where one length scale is smaller than the mean free path and one larger, the results clearly show that the flow regime of a slender rod is mostly controlled by the diameter of the rod (i.e., the smallest dimension). In this case, the free molecule transport properties best represented our nanorod. Combining both theory and experiment we show how, by evaluating the mobility as a function of applied electric field, we can extract both rod length and diameter.

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