Phase coexistance in polydisperse mixture of hard-sphere colloidal and flexible chain particles

TL;DR

This paper introduces a theoretical framework to calculate the complete phase diagram of polydisperse colloid-polymer mixtures, accounting for size and chain length variability, with a focus on phase coexistence.

Contribution

It develops a novel scheme combining thermodynamic perturbation theory and recent methods to analyze phase behavior in complex polydisperse mixtures.

Findings

Full phase diagram for polydisperse colloid-polymer mixture presented

Method successfully captures phase coexistence and distribution functions

Illustration with size polydispersity in colloidal particles provided

Abstract

A theoretical scheme for the calculation of the full phase diagram (including cloud and shadow curves, binodals and distribution functions of the coexisting phases) for colloid-polymer mixtures with polymer chain length polydispersity and hard-sphere colloidal and polymeric monomer sizes polydispersity is proposed. The scheme combines thermodynamic perturbation theory for associating fluids and recently developed method used to determine the phase diagram of polydisperse spherical shape colloidal fluids (L.Bellier-Castella {\it et al.}, {\it J.Chem.Phys.} {\bf 113}, 8337(2000)). By way of illustration we present and discuss the full phase diagram for the mixture with polydispersity in the size of the hard-sphere colloidal particles.