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28.

Penetrability in model colloid-polymer mixtures M. Schmidt and M. Fuchs, J. Chem. Phys. 117, 6308 (2002). Locate in [bare] [illustrated] list. Get [full paper] as pdf. Abstract. In order to study the effects of penetrability in mixtures of dissimilar particles we consider hard colloidal spheres and penetrable spheres. The latter may be taken to represent ideal, noninteracting polymer coils. Polymers and colloids interact by means of a repulsive step-function pair potential, which allows for insertion of colloids into the polymer coil. The potential strength is obtained from scaling arguments for the cross virial coefficient of true colloid-polymer systems. For this model we construct a geometry-based density functional and apply it to bulk fluid demixing. We find that taking into account penetrability leads to a significant stabilization of the mixed phase for large polymer-to-colloid size ratio. [figures] Read the [full paper] as pdf.

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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