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34.

Fluid demixing in colloid-polymer mixtures: Influence of polymer interactions M. Schmidt, A. R. Denton, and J. M. Brader, J. Chem. Phys. 118, 1541 (2003). Locate in [bare] [illustrated] list. Get [full paper] as pdf. Abstract. We consider a binary mixture of hard colloidal spheres and nonadsorbing polymer coils. The polymers are regarded as effective spheres that interact with one another via a repulsive step-function pair potential and with colloids solely via excluded volume. The system is treated with a geometry-based density functional theory based on the exact zero-dimensional limit of the model. For bulk fluid phases, we calculate demixing binodals and find that with increasing strength of polymer-polymer interaction the coexisting colloidal liquid vapor phase becomes more concentrated dilute in polymer. In contrast to a simple mean-field like perturbative density functional, our approach yields good agreement with an experimental demixing phase diagram. [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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