Colloid-polymer mixtures in the protein limit

Abstract

We computed the phase-separation behavior and effective interactions of colloid-polymer mixtures in the "protein limit", where the polymer radius of gyration is much larger than the colloid radius. For ideal polymers, the critical colloidal packing fraction tends to zero, whereas for interacting polymers in a good solvent the behavior is governed by a universal binodal, implying a constant critical colloid packing fraction. In both systems the depletion interaction is not well described by effective pair potentials but requires the incorporation of many-body contributions.

4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (7)

• Can Polymer Coils be modeled as "Soft Colloids"?
• Accurate effective pair potentials for polymer solutions
• Influence of polymer excluded volume on the phase behavior of colloid-polymer mixtures
• Structure of Colloid-Polymer Suspensions
• Structure and thermodynamics of colloid-polymer mixtures: a macromolecular approach
• Polymer induced depletion potentials in polymer-colloid mixtures
• Phase separation in mixtures of colloids and long ideal polymer coils

Cited by in corpus (24)

• Structure and dynamics of a polymer-nanoparticle composite: Effect of nanoparticle size and volume fraction
• Thermodynamic perturbation theory of the phase behaviour of colloid / interacting polymer mixtures
• The Asakura-Oosawa model in the protein limit: the role of many-body interactions
• Demixing in athermal mixtures of colloids and excluded-volume polymers from a density functional theory
• Polymer Crowding and Shape Distributions in Polymer-Nanoparticle Mixtures
• Soft interactions modify the diffusive dynamics of polymer-grafted nanoparticles in solutions of free polymer
• Influence of Polymer Shape on Depletion Potentials and Crowding in Colloid-Polymer Mixtures
• Preferential localization of the bacterial nucleoid
• Bacterial nucleoid: Interplay of DNA demixing and supercoiling
• Effect of polymer-polymer interactions on the surface tension of colloid-polymer mixtures
• Depletion-Induced Forces and Crowding in Polymer-Nanoparticle Mixtures: Role of Polymer Shape Fluctuations and Penetrability
• Crowding of Polymer Coils and Demixing in Nanoparticle-Polymer Mixtures
• Polymer solutions: from hard monomers to soft polymers
• Multiblob coarse-graining for mixtures of long polymers and soft colloids
• Wetting in mixtures of colloids and excluded-volume polymers from density functional theory
• Phase diagram of mixtures of colloids and polymers in the thermal crossover from good to $\theta$ solvent
• Depletion effects in colloid-polymer solutions
• Protein-Polymer Mixtures in the Colloid Limit: Aggregation, Sedimentation and Crystallization
• Influence of Solvent Quality on Conformations of Crowded Polymers
• Accurate coarse-grained models for mixtures of colloids and linear polymers under good-solvent conditions
• Influence of Solvent Quality on Depletion Potentials in Colloid-Polymer Mixtures
• Confined crowded polymers near attractive surfaces
• Fluid-fluid demixing curves for colloid-polymer mixtures in a random colloidal matrix
• Surfactancy in a tadpole model of proteins