Depletion interaction between colloids mediated by an athermal polymer blend

Physical Review. E
A I Chervanyov

Abstract

We calculate the immersion energy of a colloid and the potential of the depletion interaction (DI) acting between colloids immersed in an athermal polymer blend. The developed theory has no limitations with respect to the polymer-to-colloid size ratios and polymer densities, covering, in particular, dense polymer blends. We demonstrate that in addition to the standard compressibility-induced mechanism of the DI there exists the mechanism relying on the correlations between compositional fluctuations specific to polymer blends. We quantitatively investigate this "compositional" mechanism of the DI and demonstrate that it causes significant contributions to the effective force acting between colloids. Further we show that relative significance of the contributions to the colloid immersion energy and the depletion potential caused by the above compositional mechanism strongly depends on the mass fractions of the polymer species and their size ratio. We find out that these contributions strongly affect the range of the DI, thus causing a significant increase in the absolute value of the second virial coefficient of the effective potential acting between colloids.

References

Aug 11, 2001·Physical Review. E, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics·M Fuchs, K S Schweizer
Apr 12, 2003·Advances in Colloid and Interface Science·R TuinierC G de Kruif
Sep 9, 2004·The Journal of Chemical Physics·Jae Youn LeeAnna C Balazs
Dec 23, 2009·The Journal of Chemical Physics·A I Chervanyov, G Heinrich
Mar 17, 2011·Journal of Physics. Condensed Matter : an Institute of Physics Journal·J Fritzsche, M Klüppel
Jul 30, 2011·Physical Review. E, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics·A I Chervanyov
Oct 4, 2012·Physical Review. E, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics·A I Chervanyov, G Heinrich
Oct 17, 2014·The Journal of Chemical Physics·Kurt BinderAntonia Statt
Jan 23, 2007·Soft Matter·Kevin J MutchJulian Eastoe

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