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Entropic interactions in suspensions of semiflexible rods: short-range effects of flexibility
A W C Lau1, Keng-Hui Lin, A G Yodh
1Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
Physical Review. E, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
|September 21, 2002
Abstract:
We compute the entropic interactions between two colloidal spheres immersed in a dilute suspension of semiflexible rods. Our model treats the semiflexible rod as a bent rod at fixed angle, set by the rod contour and persistence lengths. The entropic forces arising from this additional rotational degree of freedom are captured quantitatively by the model, and account for observations at short range in a recent experiment. Global fits to the interaction potential data suggest the persistence length of the fd virus is about two to three times smaller than the commonly used value of 2.2 microm.