Laser - Doppler Measurement of Zeta Potential

The old instrument for measuring zeta potential was marketed as the "ZetaMeter". The movement of particles in an electric field was observed on a grid with dark-field microscopy. The averages for many particles gave a zeta potential. This was tedious and subject to human error.

A new method shines a laser beam through a suspension across which an electric field is imposed. Light reflected from particles gives their location with time so that velocity can be calculated. The sensing portion of the instrument is shown in the sketch.

The output of the device is a plot of zeta potentials and number of particles with that zeta potential. The distributions can be seen. The example shown next has two peaks because there were two types of particles.

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