Stabilization of colloidal suspensions by means of highly-charged nanoparticles

Abstract

We employ a novel Monte Carlo simulation scheme to elucidate the stabilization of neutral colloidal microspheres by means of highly-charged nanoparticles [V. Tohver et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 98, 8950 (2001)]. In accordance with the experimental observations, we find that small nanoparticle concentrations induce an effective repulsion that prevents gelation caused by the intrinsic van der Waals attraction between colloids. Higher nanoparticle concentrations induce an attractive potential which is, however, qualitatively different from the regular depletion attraction. We also show how colloid-nanoparticle size asymmetry and nanoparticle charge can be used to manipulate the effective interactions.

Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters. See also S. Karanikas and A.A. Louis, cond-mat/0411279. Updated to synchronize with published version

References in corpus (3)

• Rejection-free Geometric Cluster Algorithm for Complex Fluids
• Effective forces in colloidal mixtures: from depletion attraction to accumulation repulsion
• Theory of asymmetric non-additive binary hard-sphere mixtures

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• Monte Carlo cluster algorithm for fluid phase transitions in highly size-asymmetrical binary mixtures
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• Aggregation kinetics in a model colloidal suspension
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• Structural correlations and phase separation in binary mixtures of charged and uncharged colloids
• Thermodynamics and Self-organization of Strongly Coupled Coulomb Clusters: An Experimental Study
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