Effective potentials induced by mixtures of patchy and hard co-solutes

Abstract

The addition of co-solutes to colloidal suspensions is often employed to induce tunable depletion interactions. In this work we investigate effective colloidal interactions arising from binary co-solute mixtures of hard spheres and patchy particles. By changing the relative concentration of the two species, we show that the resulting effective potential $V_{\text{eff}}$ continuously changes from the one obtained for a single-component hard sphere co-solute to that mediated by the single-component patchy particle co-solute. Interestingly, we find that, independently of the relative concentration of the two components, the resulting $V_{\text{eff}}$ is additive, i.e., it is well-described by the linear combination of the effective interactions mediated by respective pure co-solutes. However, a breakdown of the additivity occurs when the co-solute mixture is close to the onset of a demixing transition. These results represent a step forward in understanding and predicting colloidal behaviour in complex and crowded environments and for exploiting this knowledge to design targeted colloidal superstructures.

arXiv commentsubmitted to the JCP special issue on depletion interactions

References in corpus (26)

• Depletion potential in hard-sphere mixtures: theory and applications
• Self-Assembly of Patchy Particles into Polymer Chains: A Parameter-Free Comparison between Wertheim Theory and Monte Carlo Simulation
• Entropic Forces in Binary Hard Sphere Mixtures: Theory and Simulation
• A new look at effective interactions between microgel particles
• Collective behavior of colloids due to critical Casimir interactions
• Limiting the valence: advancements and new perspectives on patchy colloids, soft functionalized nanoparticles and biomolecules
• Algorithmic design of self-assembling structures
• Self-assembly of the simple cubic lattice with an isotropic potential
• Phase Behavior of Active Swimmers in Depletants: Molecular Dynamics and Integral Equation Theory
• Multiple glass transitions in star polymer mixtures: Insights from theory and simulations
• Designed Diamond Ground State via Optimized Isotropic Monotonic Pair Potentials
• Assembly of nothing: Equilibrium fluids with designed structured porosity
• Designing isotropic interactions for self-assembly of complex lattices
• Casimir-like forces at the percolation transition
• Equilibrium cluster fluids: Pair interactions via inverse design
• Interactions and design rules for assembly of porous colloidal mesophases
• Self-assembly of the decagonal quasicrystalline order in simple three-dimensional systems
• Dimensionality and design of isotropic interactions that stabilize honeycomb, square, simple cubic, and diamond lattices
• How soft repulsion enhances the depletion mechanism
• Non-Close-Packed Three-Dimensional Quasicrystals
• Numerical Investigation of Glassy Dynamics in Low Density Systems
• Properties of patchy colloidal particles close to a surface: a Monte Carlo and density functional study
• Hard spheres at a planar hard wall: Simulations and density functional theory
• Critical Casimir forces and colloidal aggregation: A numerical study
• Tuning effective interactions close to the critical point in colloidal suspensions
• Discontinuous change from thermally- to geometrically- dominated effective interactions in colloidal solutions