Nonlinear screening and gas-liquid separation in suspensions of charged colloids

Abstract

We calculate phase diagrams of charged colloidal spheres (valency $Z$ and radius $a$) in a 1:1 electrolyte from multi-centered nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann theory. Our theory takes into account charge-renormalization of the colloidal interactions and volume terms due to many-body effects. For valencies as small as Z=1 and as large as $10^4$ we find a gas--liquid spinodal instability in the colloid-salt phase diagram provided $Z\lB/a\gtrsim24\pm1$, where $\lB$ is the Bjerrum length.

accepted by Phys. Rev. Lett

References in corpus (2)

• Many-body interactions and melting of colloidal crystals
• Phase Separation in Charge-Stabilized Colloidal Suspensions: Influence of Nonlinear Screening

Cited by in corpus (5)

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• Effective Electrostatic Interactions in Colloid-Nanoparticle Mixtures
• Electroneutrality and Phase Behavior of Colloidal Suspensions
• Diffusion and conduction in a salt-free colloidal suspension via molecular dynamics simulations
• Machine-Learned Many-Body Potentials for Charged Colloids reveal Gas-Liquid Spinodal Instabilities only in the strong-coupling regime of Primitive Models