Dynamic simulation of dielectrophoresis in colloidal suspension

We have developed a molecular-dynamics-like method to simulate the behavior of dielectric particles suspension in electrorheological fluid subjected to both uniform and nonuniform electric fields. In this method, the force acting on the particles is calculated by differentiating the electrostatic energy with respect to the position, and the energy is computed with multiple image method. The results show that considering dielectrophoretic force (DEP) force only is not enough for the simulation of particle motion when the suspension is subjected to nonuniform electric field since particle-particle interactions are ignored. The DEP-only approximation becomes more limited for the study of particles very close to each other. Our new method accounts for both particle-field (DEP) and particle-particle interactions under near- and far-field conditions.