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    27. Demixing of colloid-polymer mixtures in poor solvents
    M. Schmidt and A. R. Denton, Phys. Rev. E 65, 061410 (2002).
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    Abstract. The influence of poor solvent quality on fluid demixing of a model mixture of colloids and nonadsorbing polymers is investigated using density functional theory. The colloidal particles are modeled as hard spheres and the polymer coils as effective interpenetrating spheres that have hard interactions with the colloids. The solvent is modeled as a two-component mixture of a primary solvent, regarded as a background theta solvent for the polymer, and a cosolvent of point particles that are excluded from both colloids and polymers. Cosolvent exclusion favors overlap of polymers, mimicking the effect of a poor solvent by inducing an effective attraction between polymers. For this model, a geometry-based density functional theory is derived and applied to bulk fluid phase behavior. With increasing cosolvent concentration worsening solvent quality, the predicted colloid-polymer demixing binodal shifts to lower colloid concentrations, promoting demixing. For sufficiently poor solvent, a reentrant demixing transition is predicted at low colloid concentrations. [figures]


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    Colloid-polymer mixtures: Beyond the AOV model

    Extensions include taking into account an explicit solvent of point particles [27], penetrability of (small) colloids into polymers [28], colloid-induced polymer compression [31], the influence of polymer interactions on fluid-demixing [34] and on the contact angle of the colloidal liquid-gas interface and a hard wall [50], as well as the stability of the floating liquid phase in sedimenting colloid-polymer mixtures for non-ideal polymers [52].

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MS, 20 Apr 2009.