Effect of Size Polydispersity on Melting of Charged Colloidal Systems
arXiv:cond-mat/0603283 · doi:10.1088/0256-307X/20/9/363
Abstract
We introduce simple prescriptions of the Yukawa potential to describe the effect of size polydispersity and macroion shielding effect in charged colloidal systems. The solid-liquid phase boundaries were presented with the Lindemann criterion based on molecular dynamics simulations. Compared with the Robbins-Kremer-Grest simulation results, a deviation of melting line is observed at small , which means large macroion screening length. This deviation of phase boundary is qualitatively consistent with the simulation result of the nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann equation with full many-body interactions. It is found that this deviation of the solid-liquid phase behaviour is sensitive to the screening parameter.