Microelectrophoresis of Silica Rods Using Confocal Microscopy.

The electrophoretic mobility and the zeta potential (ζ) of fluorescently labeled colloidal silica rods, with an aspect ratio of 3.8 and 6.1, were determined with microelectrophoresis measurements using confocal microscopy. In the case where the colloidal particles all move at the same speed parallel to the direction of the electric field, we record a xyz-stack over the whole depth of the capillary. This method is faster and more robust compared to taking xyt-series at different depths inside the capillary to obtain the parabolic flow profile, as was done in previous work from our group. In some cases, rodlike particles do not move all at the same speed in the electric field, but exhibit a velocity that depends on the angle between the long axis of the rod and the electric field. We measured the orientation-dependent velocity of individual silica rods during electrophoresis as a function of κa, where κ