Long-range attractive tail of colloid interaction

TL;DR

This paper proposes a modified electrostatic potential for highly-charged colloids that includes a long-range attractive tail, improving the description of dilute colloid dispersions beyond traditional DLVO theory.

Contribution

It introduces a new screened electric potential with a long-range attractive tail derived from the generalized Gibbs free energy, extending the DLVO model.

Findings

The new potential captures attractive interactions at long distances.

It provides a better theoretical framework for dilute colloid dispersions.

The approach links thermodynamic potentials to colloid interaction modeling.

Abstract

To describe rich phenomena of dilute dispersions of highly-charged colloid particles, it is necessary to modify the long-range electric part of the DLVO potential. The screened Coulomb potential of pure repulsion obtained from the Helmholtz free energy in the DLVO theory is replaced by a new screened electric potential with long-range attractive tail derived from the generalized Gibbs free energy which is identified with a total sum of chemical potentials.