Accurate description of bulk and interfacial properties in colloid-polymer mixtures

Abstract

Large-scale Monte Carlo simulations of a phase-separating colloid-polymer mixture are performed and compared to recent experiments. The approach is based on effective interaction potentials in which the central monomers of self-avoiding polymer chains are used as effective coordinates. By incorporating polymer nonideality together with soft colloid-polymer repulsion, the predicted binodal is in excellent agreement with recent experiments. In addition, the interfacial tension as well as the capillary length are in quantitative agreement with experimental results obtained at a number of points in the phase-coexistence region, without the use of any fit parameters

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

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• Demixing in athermal mixtures of colloids and excluded-volume polymers from a density functional theory
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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Phase behavior and structure of model colloid-polymer mixtures confined between two parallel planar walls
• Effect of excluded volume interactions on the interfacial properties of colloid-polymer mixtures
• Accurate coarse-grained models for mixtures of colloids and linear polymers under good-solvent conditions
• Fluid-fluid demixing transitions in colloid--polyelectrolyte star mixtures