Wednesday, November 7, 2007 - 4:06 PM
506c

Relationships Between Structure, Thermodynamics, And Dynamics Of Colloid-Polymer Mixtures In Good Solvent

Gaurav Goel, Department of Chemical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, C0400, Austin, TX 78705, William P. Krekelberg, Chemical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, C0400, Austin, TX 78712, and Thomas M. Truskett, Chemical Engineering and Institute for Theoretical Chemistry, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, C0400, Austin, TX 78712.

We study an extension of Asakura-Oosawa-Vrij1,2 model of hard-sphere colloids and nonadsorbing polymers via a geometry-based density functional theory3 and molecular simulations. Polymer nonideality is taken into account through a repulsive step-function pair potential between polymers. Non-trivial effects of polymer nonideality on phase behavior of such model systems have already been documented in the literature3-5. In this talk, we present an exhaustive study of the effect of colloid and polymer concentration, polymer-polymer interactions, and colloid-to-polymer size ratio on the relationships between structure, thermodynamics, and dynamics of above system.

1. Asakura S and Oosawa F, J. Chem. Phys. 22, 1255 (1954). 2. Vrij A, Pure Appl. Chem. 48, 471 (1976). 3. Schmidt M, Denton AR, and Brader JM, J. Chem. Phys., 118 (3), 1541 (2003). 4. Warren PB, Llett, SM, and Poon WCK, Phys. Rev. E, 52, 5205 (1995). 5. Vink RLC and Schmidt M, Phys. Rev. E, 71, 051406 (2005).


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