Effective electrostatic interactions in mixtures of charged colloids

TL;DR

This paper develops a generalized theory for effective electrostatic interactions in polydisperse charged colloid mixtures, incorporating macroion density effects and validating predictions with molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations.

Contribution

It extends existing theories to mixtures, providing explicit analytical expressions and validating them through simulations, enabling better modeling of complex colloidal systems.

Findings

Effective pair potentials depend on macroion density and volume exclusion.

Simulation results closely match theoretical predictions.

Charged nanoparticles can enhance electrostatic screening.

Abstract

We present a theory of effective electrostatic interactions in polydisperse suspensions of charged macroions, generalizing to mixtures a theory previously developed for monodisperse suspensions. Combining linear response theory with a random phase approximation for microion correlations, we coarse-grain the microion degrees of freedom to derive general expressions for effective macroion-macroion pair potentials and a one-body volume energy. For model mixtures of charged hard-sphere colloids, we give explicit analytical expressions. The resulting effective pair potentials have the same general form as predicted by linearized Poisson-Boltzmann theory, but consistently incorporate dependence on macroion density and excluded volume via the Debye screening constant. The volume energy, which depends on the average macroion density, contributes to the free energy and so can influence thermodynamic properties of deionized suspensions. To validate the theory, we compute radial distribution functions of binary mixtures of oppositely charged colloidal macroions from molecular dynamics simulations of the coarse-grained model (with implicit microions), taking effective pair potentials as input. Our results agree closely with corresponding results from more computationally intensive Monte Carlo simulations of the primitive model (with explicit microions). Simulations of a mixture with large size and charge asymmetries indicate that charged nanoparticles can enhance electrostatic screening of charged colloids. The theory presented here lays a foundation for future large-scale modeling of complex mixtures of charged colloids, nanoparticles, and polyelectrolytes.