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Published on: May 20, 2014
Potential theory of the depletion interaction in the colloid-polymer mixtures
1Leibniz Institute for Polymer Research Dresden, Hohe Strasse 6, Dresden D-01069, Germany. chervanyov@ipfdd.de
Abstract:
By developing and making use of the potential theory of the polymer-mediated interaction between spherical colloids, we investigate the many-body effects on the depletion interaction among these colloids in the colloid-polymer mixture. As our main results, we obtain analytic expressions for the polymer end density in the presence of the colloids and the many-body depletion potential acting between these colloids in the "protein" limit. We present a comparison of our theoretical findings with the results of recent computer simulations.
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