Thermodynamic perturbation theory of the phase behaviour of colloid / interacting polymer mixtures

Abstract

We use thermodynamic perturbation theory to calculate the free energies and resulting phase diagrams of binary systems of spherical colloidal particles and interacting polymer coils in good solvent within an effective one-component representation of such mixtures, whereby the colloidal particles interact via a polymer-induced depletion potential. MC simulations are used to test the convergence of the high temperature expansion of the free energy. The phase diagrams calculated for several polymer to colloid size ratios differ considerably from the results of similar calculations for mixtures of colloids and ideal (non-interacting) polymers, and are in good overall agreement with the results of an explicit two-component representation of the same system, which includes more than two-body depletion forces.

8 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Molecular Physics

References in corpus (6)

• Influence of polymer excluded volume on the phase behavior of colloid-polymer mixtures
• Colloid-polymer mixtures in the protein limit
• Polymer induced depletion potentials in polymer-colloid mixtures
• How to derive and parameterize effective potentials in colloid-polymer mixtures
• Density profiles and surface tensions of polymers near colloidal surfaces
• Influence of solvent quality on effective pair potentials between polymers in solution

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• The smooth cut-off Hierarchical Reference Theory of fluids
• Effect of excluded volume interactions on the interfacial properties of colloid-polymer mixtures
• The effect of the range of interaction on the phase diagram of a globular protein
• Simulation and theory of fluid demixing and interfacial tension of mixtures of colloids and non-ideal polymers
• Effects of polymer polydispersity on the phase behaviour of colloid-polymer mixtures
• Fluid-Fluid and Fluid-Solid transitions in the Kern-Frenkel model from Barker-Henderson thermodynamic perturbation theory
• Three-body interactions in complex fluids: virial coefficients from simulation finite-size effects
• Influence of solvent quality on polymer solutions: a Monte Carlo study of bulk and interfacial properties
• A density--functional study of interfacial properties of colloid--polymer mixtures