Depletion forces between non-spherical objects

Abstract

We extend the insertion approach for calculating depletion potentials to the case of non-spherical solutes. Instead of a brute-force calculation we suggest to employ the recently developed curvature expansion of density profiles close to complexly shaped walls. The approximations introduced in the calculation by the use of the curvature expansion and of weight functions for non-spherical objects can be tested independently. As an application for our approach we calculate and discuss the depletion potential between two hard oblate ellipsoids in a solvent of hard spheres. For this system we calculate the entropic force and torque acting on the objects.

8 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Morphological Thermodynamics of Fluids: Shape Dependence of Free Energies
• Entropic torque
• Depletion potential in colloidal mixtures of hard spheres and platelets

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Conceptual aspects of line tensions
• Simulating the Entropic Collapse of Coarse-Grained Chromosomes
• Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Depletion-Induced Interactions for Soft Matter Systems
• Depletion force in the infinite-dilution limit in a solvent of nonadditive hard spheres
• Depletion interaction between two ellipsoids
• Self-assembly and entropic effects in pear-shaped colloid systems: II. Depletion attraction of pear-shaped particles in a hard sphere solvent
• Depletion force between disordered linear macromolecules