The pair potential of colloidal stars

Abstract

We report on the construction of colloidal stars: 1 micrometer polystyrene beads grafted with a dense brush of 1 micrometer long and 10 nm wide semi-flexible filamentous viruses. The pair interaction potentials of colloidal stars are measured using an experimental implementation of umbrella sampling, a technique originally developed in computer simulations in order to probe rare events. The influence of ionic strength and grafting density on the interaction is measured. Good agreements are found between the measured interactions and theoretical predictions based upon the osmotic pressure of counterions.

5 pages, 3 figures. Changed content

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Measuring cohesion between macromolecular filaments, one pair at a time: Depletion-induced microtubule bundling
• Controlling dispersion forces between small particles with artificially created random light fields
• Tracking of colloids close to contact
• Distribution of counterions and interaction between two similarly charged dielectric slabs: Roles of charge discreteness and dielectric inhomogeneity
• Filamentous phages as building blocks for reconfigurable and hierarchical self-assembly