Macromolecular theory of solvation and structure in mixtures of colloids and polymers

Abstract

The structural and thermodynamic properties of mixtures of colloidal spheres and non-adsorbing polymer chains are studied within a novel general two-component macromolecular liquid state approach applicable for all size asymmetry ratios. The dilute limits, when one of the components is at infinite dilution but the other concentrated, are presented and compared to field theory and models which replace polymer coils with spheres. Whereas the derived analytical results compare well, qualitatively and quantitatively, with mean-field scaling laws where available, important differences from ``effective sphere'' approaches are found for large polymer sizes or semi-dilute concentrations.

arXiv comment23 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (10)

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Cited by in corpus (18)

• Structure of Colloid-Polymer Suspensions
• Polymer induced depletion potentials in polymer-colloid mixtures
• Density profiles and surface tensions of polymers near colloidal surfaces
• Relating monomer to centre-of-mass distribution functions in polymer solutions
• Mixtures of Charged Colloid and Neutral Polymer: Influence of Electrostatic Interactions on Demixing and Interfacial Tension
• Demixing in athermal mixtures of colloids and excluded-volume polymers from a density functional theory
• Accurate description of bulk and interfacial properties in colloid-polymer mixtures
• Effects of polymer polydispersity on the phase behaviour of colloid-polymer mixtures
• Bacterial nucleoid: Interplay of DNA demixing and supercoiling
• Preferential localization of the bacterial nucleoid
• Non-monotonic effect of confinement on the glass transition
• Polymer solutions: from hard monomers to soft polymers
• An integral equation approach to effective interactions between polymers in solution
• Phase diagram of mixtures of colloids and polymers in the thermal crossover from good to $\theta$ solvent
• Depletion effects in colloid-polymer solutions
• Theory of polymer diffusion in polymer-nanoparticle mixtures: effect of nanoparticle concentration and polymer length
• Accurate coarse-grained models for mixtures of colloids and linear polymers under good-solvent conditions
• Depletion force between disordered linear macromolecules