Langmuir, Vol.14, No.16, 4445-4450, 1998
Electrostatic immobilization of hydrogen ion on latex
When alkali metal counterions of sulfonated polystyrene latex particles (spheres with radius a) were replaced by hydrogen ion, the voltammetric current for reduction of the hydrogen ion without supporting electrolyte was only a few percent of the bulk-diffusion current of the equivalent concentration of hydrogen ion. The steady state current at microelectrodes is much smaller than the diffusion current of completely dissociated hydrogen ion (property of a strong acid) and is much larger than the current by diffusion of the latex (property of a weak acid). The Debye-Huckel theory applied to the latex system predicts only the voltammetric property of a weak acid. We propose a model of a rigid spherical unit cell, in which a latex particle is surrounded with Z hydrogen ions that obey the Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) equation without the electrostatic effect from the other latex particles. Linearization of the PB equation does not give satisfactory solutions, whereas numerical calculation without the linearization provided reasonable potential and concentration variations. The condition under which the reaction order of the dissociation of the hydrogen ion is unity is that the hydrogen ion in the segment r > 4.2a participates in the electrode reaction and that the ions in the segment a < r < 4.2a are bounded to the latex particle.