Critical Casimir forces and colloidal aggregation: A numerical study

Abstract

We present a numerical study of the effective potential $V_{\mathrm{eff}}$ between two hard-sphere colloids dispersed in a solvent of interacting particles, for several values of temperature and solvent density, approaching the solvent gas-liquid critical point. We investigate the stability of a system of particles interacting via $V_{\mathrm{eff}}$ to evaluate the locus of colloidal aggregation in the solvent phase-diagram, and its dependence on the colloid size. We assess how the excluded volume depletion forces are modified by solvent attraction and discuss under which conditions solvent critical fluctuations, in the form of critical Casimir forces, can be used to effectively manipulate colloidal aggregation.

References in corpus (5)

• Phase diagram of patchy colloids: towards empty liquids
• Critical Casimir forces in colloidal suspensions on chemically patterned surfaces
• The vanishing limit of the square-well fluid: the adhesive hard sphere model as a reference system
• Colloidal aggregation and critical Casimir forces
• Effective forces in square well and square shoulder fluids

Cited by in corpus (4)

• How soft repulsion enhances the depletion mechanism
• Properties of patchy colloidal particles close to a surface: a Monte Carlo and density functional study
• Tuning effective interactions close to the critical point in colloidal suspensions
• Depletion force in the infinite-dilution limit in a solvent of nonadditive hard spheres