Critical adsorption on non-spherical colloidal particles

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the shape of non-spherical colloidal particles affects critical adsorption phenomena, providing explicit calculations and a systematic curvature expansion of the order parameter profile near the critical point.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic curvature expansion method for analyzing the order parameter profile around non-spherical colloids near criticality, extending previous spherical models.

Findings

Derived explicit temperature-dependent order parameter profiles.

Developed a curvature expansion framework for non-spherical geometries.

Connected curvature expansion to short-distance behavior at critical composition.

Abstract

We consider a non-spherical colloidal particle immersed in a fluid close to its critical point. The temperature dependence of the corresponding order parameter profile is calculated explicitly. We perform a systematic expansion of the order parameter profile in powers of the local curvatures of the surface of the colloidal particle. This curvature expansion reduces to the short distance expansion of the order parameter profile in the case that the solvent is at the critical composition.